


The Moon

by SunHater



Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian, My First Work in This Fandom, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 82,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29144799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunHater/pseuds/SunHater
Summary: Susie has a few bad nights. Things are changing. Nothing makes sense. Everything keeps getting worse.She's sure the moon has something to do with it.Outdated, unedited, and unfit for reading. Read the notes for more info.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. ACT 1: TOWN OF MYSTERY

**Author's Note:**

> This was made back in late 2018. I was a far less experienced writer than I am now. A lot of this has a lot of grammar, spelling, and other issues. I am not proud of this work in the slightest, and I do not consider it an adequate representation of the work I put out now. It being here is mostly for preservation purposes. I may remake it in the future, but it would be much different, and a lot of work to fix something I don't think deserves fixing.
> 
> This is all to say that this shit sucks. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't read it, or dropped it at a certain point. I won't stop you from reading it, though. I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into. 
> 
> All that being said, enjoy, if you can.

“This isn't normal. It's too much. That was so cool, I want to go back, I need to go back. I can't wait until tomorrow. I don't know if I want to leave when I go back.”

Susie hasn't been able to rest since she got home. Wide awake, tossing and turning in her bed, she had tried every mental trick she knows to stop thinking about the closet. The experiences she'd had, the people she met, how much it changed her. It was overwhelming her to the point where she could no longer sleep. Even though she'd basically helped save an entire kingdom, she didn't feel the least bit exhausted. And Kris... Kris was still that quiet kid that she'd known and hated since forever. But after all that happened, she was coming around on him. Maybe quiet people aren't so bad after all.

Not as if that revelation would ease her mind. She still couldn't sleep. At least being about a mile off from town meant it was completely silent, besides the sounds of the forest creeping in through her room's open window, next to her bed.

Maybe that's it.

  
Susie sat up in her bed and grabbed a hold of the window pane, sliding it to the right and closing it, locking it as well. Maybe a lock on a second story window was a bit overkill, but who knows what's out there. The room, now completely silent besides Susie's slightly frustrated breaths, and only dimly illuminated by the pale moonlight outside, felt just a little more calm than before. She sighs, trying once more to fall into the slumber she so desperately needed. And, for a short while, her feeble attempts at accomplishing this paid off. She felt her eyes grow weary, almost forcing themselves closed. The last thing she sees before her mind shuts down is the soft light of the moon illuminating the door to the rest of her house.

  
Her dream is one full of darkness. Darkness and screams. Screams of terror. Screams of Kris, Noelle, and the rest of the townsfolk. Such unbearably deafening wails, yet nothing but darkness surrounds her. It feels like she's falling.

She shoots up to a sitting position, gasping at the air for a few seconds before calming herself down. Susie felt so out of breath that it's almost as if she was just being choked. She doesn't even remember the last time she had a nightmare like that. Maybe closing that window wasn't a good idea after all. To remedy this, she decides that maybe it's best to take a walk. To anyone else it'd probably be seen as unusual to take a walk this late at night, but it's not like she cared about what anyone thought before. Why start now? She hops off of her bed, already dressed in her normal attire. Ripped jeans, white and blue shirt, the usual. Her jacket was laying on top of a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, which she grabs and dresses in on her way out the door, closing it firmly behind her.  
  
Living alone had it's benefits. Not having to deal with anyone else's garbage was her favorite. Sure, she left messes around the house all the time, who would be anywhere near it and care? But it was her mess. She owned it. It was hers. There wasn't even any loneliness until tonight. Until she began to miss the happiness she felt with Kris and Ralsei. Even though she'd never fully admit it, she felt a sense of home and belonging that she's sorely missed for a long time. Maybe even her whole life.

  
Susie walks down the stairs and into the kitchen. Well, what passed as one anyway. They cut off the utilities to this place a long time ago, before she even took residence in it. Who knows who it belonged to before, but it was hers now, and she doubted the previous owner would care. It didn't bother her too much that she was basically as homeless as one could get while still having a house to come back to. Finding food was never an issue, since “food” was whatever fit in her mouth and wouldn't break her teeth. Speaking of food, she walked over to the clean, but powerless fridge, and opened it.  
  
Chalk. A box of it, stolen from Alphy's classroom. At least fifteen sticks of it. She began to feel a little guilty about that.

Not enough to keep her from eating what she had, though. With the box tucked into her pocket, she left the house through the front door, slamming it shut behind her as she began to walk down the narrow forest path that led to her home. It was an oddly quiet night out. Before she slept and had that nightmare, the forest was about as lively as normal, but now the only sound seemed to be coming from her own footsteps crunching the leaves underneath her feet. The autumn trees surrounding the path were so thick that even in the autumn, when all the leaves had fallen to the ground, the moon's light still had trouble reaching the path. It left the narrow trail feeling claustrophobic and dark, but Susie had confidence that she could take whatever would try to attack her, or at least have the agility to outrun it if the situation looked bleak.

No such attacks have happened though, so she wasn't too worried they'd suddenly start now. She used to keep wood cutting ax whenever she'd walk the path on her way to school just in case, but she soon realized as much as she disliked the place before, she would probably still need school, and having someone find an ax in your locker probably wouldn't look too good.

The path eventually made it's end as it was intersected by the road that leads into town. This felt as good of a turning point as any on a normal walk, but maybe something in town could soothe her nerves more. Maybe a trip to the diner? Is it even open at this hour? Only one way to find out. The trip to town was uneventful as ever. Considering the road is blocked off right at the edge of it, and has been for quite a while, there wasn't even the company of passing traffic to liven things up. Just the forest on either side. The dead silent forest.

Susie grunted as she climbed over the barriers, and into the town proper. It was more like a village in size, but that only meant she could memorize the way to places easier. Orange lights shone brightly from the diner a block away. Perfect, it's still open. Susie's walk soon turns into a light sprint to the diner, and she's only a few steps away when she sees the lights shut off, and soon after a purple rabbit steps out onto the pavement, locking the door behind her. Susie's sprint slowly stops, panting slightly.  
“You have to be kidding me...” She says in an exhausted voice.

“Sorry, Susie. You were just a little too late. What in the world are you doing up this late anyway?”  
“Uhh, I actually don't know what time it is. I don't really have a clock or watch or anything.”  
“It's midnight, hun.”  
Susie replies with a blank expression, followed by her rubbing her eyes.  
“Of course.”  
“You still didn't answer my question, dear.”  
“...Which? Oh, right. I had a weird dream and felt a little closed in, so I came here hoping I could have a drink or something. Maybe get my mind off things.”  
The bartender looks at her with a look of understanding, and places a hand on Susie's shoulder.  
“Tell ya what. I'll unlock the door and turn the lights back on, then make us some hot chocolate.”

This lady, though she'd only met her on a few occasions, would never seem afraid of her like everyone else. She seemed like she knew her. Part of Susie didn't like the fact that she could seemingly be read like a book by her, but it was nice to have someone not be terrified of her.  
“You... You'd do that?”  
The rabbit giggles softly.  
“You say that like I just gave you a million dollars, dear! Come on, it's no big deal. Besides, you clearly need someone to t-”  
“I don't need you to be a therapist or anything.”  
“That's fine. You can come in, and we can just drink. You don't even need to talk.”  
Susie pauses for a couple seconds, before sighing.  
“Yeah, alright.”  
“Good.”, she replies, unlocking the door to the diner.  
“Hey. I didn't catch your name.”  
“Call me Hazel. Now come on in, It'll be a few before the water boils but it shouldn't take too long.”

“...Thanks.”  
Hazel replied with nothing more but a nod of acknowledgment. With that final word, and the unlocking of the door, the two monsters let themselves in.

  
The diner's lobby was only half illuminated by the moonlight outside, meaning half of the room was drenched in darkness. Hazel, unphased, continued into the inky darkness.  
“Wait here Susie,” she called behind her, “I'll get some light in here.”  
“What if people think we're open?”

“Who else is up at this hour? Besides, they'll see the sign on the door saying “closed”, and if they can read, they'll move on.”

“'Kay.”  
“Have a seat and relax, I'm sure you need to.”

  
Susie said nothing in response, and instead looked around for anywhere visible to sit. She never liked bar stools anyway, so that part of the diner being darkened didn't impact her decision making much. She eventually settled on a booth to the rightmost side of the building. Sliding onto the smooth seat, she notices a weird burn mark on the seat across from her, on the other side of the table. She thinks nothing of it, however. She instead crosses her arms on the table and lays her head on them. It felt like she'd been awake for ages. Saving a kingdom in a day really does take it out of someone, she figures. Hazel calls out from depths of the diner. What could be taking so long?

“Just a sec, I-”

And with that, a bright light burned into her eyes, accompanying it, the sound of smooth jazz being played over incredibly low fidelity speakers. One of her arms quickly rises to her eyes to the light from blinding her, before she lowers it as her eyes adjust.  
“And there we are! Now I'll make us up some hot chocolate.” Hazel says in an oddly excited tone.  
“How do you keep yourself so energetic? You're acting like you just started work.”  
“Oh, a good bartender has her secrets. But enough about me, you're acting quite unlike yourself tonight.”  
“Yeah? How?”  
“Well, it seems like you've... how should I put this... calmed down?”  
“So I'm less scary.”  
“Your words, not mine. Though, I was never really scared of you.”  
“Why not?”  
“I didn't buy...you. Whatever act you put on, I wasn't convinced. I didn't really see you as a mean, spiteful kid. You just seemed like you had a lot of emotions in you that didn't bode well when they got out.”

Susie didn't respond. She suspected that was the reason for a while now bu-  
“Along with the fact that it looked like ya just needed a hug.”  
  


Hazel continues, interrupting Susie's train of thought as she sat down across from Susie, two steaming mugs of hot chocolate in each hand. She slides a mug over to Susie, who accepts it by slurping loudly as she downs almost the entire mug in one gulp. The sudden realization of how disrespectful that looked hit her like a ton of bricks. Her pupils shrink as her gaze reaches the equally shocked looking rabbit across from her. She slowly puts the mug back onto the counter, scratching the back her head and letting her hair hide her shame as it fell in front of her face.  
“Sorry. It's uh... kind of not a “social interaction” night for me.”

“I can tell.”  
The two sit awkwardly sit in silence for a bit before Hazel graciously breaks it.  
“Did it at least taste good?”  
“Yeah. It was pretty damn good, actually.”

Hazel giggles a little, sipping on her own hot chocolate and looking out the window into the street. Doesn't look like she was looking at anything in particular considering all that's across the street is the grocery store, but she seemed content, if nothing else, to just enjoy the atmosphere of the moment. And even Susie had to admit, it was pretty calming to be here. The occasional crackles and hisses from the speakers were charming in a way, and the comfortably chilled air of the near empty lobby filled Susie with a calm that not even her own house could bring. Maybe it'd be nice to come back here sometime. Maybe when her mind was less clouded.

  
“Hazel?”

“Mhmm?”  
“Thanks for this. This is nice.”  
“That's another thing too. You were never one to apologize or thank anyone. You're making good progress, dear!”  
She isn't sure how to respond, so she hides underneath her hair again.  
“Erm, but of course, you're welcome here any time.”  
The bunny lets out a soft yawn, stretching her arms upward.  
“But, maybe at a better hour, I can't do this every night, y'know.”  
“Yeah, of course.”  
  


Susie's eyes grow worried as she realizes something she should've earlier.

“Shit. Hazel, I don't have any money.”  
“Oh, no worries hun, it's on the house.”  
“Are you sure? I mean I could work it off if you want or-”  
“Shhh, please dear. Don't worry about it. You've already got enough on your mind. And besides, hot chocolates are super cheap. You being so worried about something so small already says to me that you're good for it.”  
“That's... really kind of you to say. I can't thank you enough Hazel.”  
“Oh sure you can. And you already have.”  
The two unlikely monsters just stared out the window for a while once more. It was nice to be in the presence of someone that felt like they understood her. But the calming atmosphere was getting to her as well, and before long the pair were yawning. The time had come to end this little meeting.

“Well, I suppose I'd better head home now.” Hazel sighed out. “We both need a good night's sleep.”  
“You more than me, at least you have a job to go to.”  
“Don't you have school?”  
Shit.  
“Yeah, I do actually, damn.”  
“Whatever's in that head of yours must be pretty crazy to make you forget school exists.”  
“You have no idea.”

With the two monsters saying their respective goodbyes, Hazel heads back inside to close up shop once more, while Susie, clear minded and calm, begins her walk back to her house. She reaches the barriers blocking the exit of the town before she stops. Susie looks north, to the hill that overlooks the town and the house sat on top of that hill. Kris was probably fast asleep by now, along with Toriel, but she felt a strange presence. An oddly alluring feeling to keep her eyes locked upon the house on the hill.

“You need sleep.”, she thought to herself. “No distractions.”  
These thoughts in mind, she snaps out of this trance and hops over the barriers, onto the road ahead. Not without taking out a few of the chalk sticks she brought with her, of course. The space in between the trees that leads to her house being as narrow as it is, she would sometimes find the path hard to spot at night. She needed to remember to find a flashlight somewhere in town, though without money that'd be kind of hard to find. She did eventually find it using the light of the moon alone, but on darker nights, she'd need something to help her for sure.

The road to the town being unable to be used meant that nobody was getting nearly as much business as they normal, and as such, getting hired would take a miracle. And that's assuming you don't have as bad a reputation as Susie. She felt as if she needed a new start, a new life. A place where no one knows her name or past. But that would mean abandoning the possibility of having further adventures with Kris and maybe Ralsei, which changed her world so drastically that she wasn't sure giving it up would be what she wanted at all.

Thoughts of a new life and different worlds plagued her mind so badly that she almost didn't notice how far she traveled. Susie was already at what she called her home, and the trip felt much shorter than last time. All that thinking really does make the time go by. Her unconscious hunger for chalk meant that as she walked, she had absent-mindedly chewed on and eaten at least half of the chalk in the box. She felt ashamed, almost. So much good quality chalk just to be eaten without a care in the world. She makes a mental note to try to savor the last remaining few for next time.

  
The house's front door opens with an all too familiar excessive amount of creaks, the floorboards doing the same as she steps into the living room, closing the door behind her. Nothing inside had changed. Not that anything should've. The only time she'd made any modification to the house is when she took it upon herself to repair it. Well, the word repair is a stretch, considering all she did was board up a few windows and make a few of the floors on the upper level more stable. She figured that, if she was to stay in an abandoned place, she'd at least want to walk on the floor without the fear of falling through it.

Speaking of the upper floors, she really needed to be asleep. And soon, at that. If she wanted any chance of seeing Kris and going on another adventure, she'd best be there on time. Figures that the driving force behind her desire to go to school has nothing to do with school itself. She clamors up the stairs and along the creaking floorboards, trying to keep her excitement down as much as possible so she could actually sleep when she gets to the bed. Susie walks into the open, welcoming door of her room and closes the door behind her, disrobing her jacket from her body and climbing into her bed. The bed itself wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, considering it was little more than an unwashed mattress on a rusted, creaky spring frame, but it was enough, and she could sleep just about anywhere. Looking up at the ceiling, she examines an old poster she'd hung above her bed a long time ago. The text was faded quite a bit, but she could still make out the words on it well enough.

“Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist!  
Keep on loving, keep on fighting!”

Susie forgets exactly where she found the poster, or why she kept it in the first place, but sometimes, even if it's something as little as a poster on your ceiling, it's nice to have something to get you through the day. Overwhelmed by a mixture of comfort and exhaustion, and calmed by the moonlight seeping in her window, Susie turns towards the wall and closes her eyes.

Only to have them shoot open again after about a minute and a half.

Something wasn't right. Something was terribly off. A single, obvious detail, but she hadn't noticed it until she had placed herself in her most vulnerable position. There was no wind to speak of in the house, it was incredibly well sheltered considering it's abandoned state. She was certain no one else knew about where she lived.

Why, then, was the door to her room wide open even though she was certain she closed it tight when she left? Why, then, did she hear breathing even though she was petrified to the point of her not daring to inhale or exhale a single breath of air? Why then, even in the faintest of volumes could she recognize the sound coming from the town?

  
Susie heard the screaming again.

But this time, she wasn't dreaming.

  
Susie felt her breathing quicken. The air suddenly felt colder, harder to breathe. A fear covered her body that she hadn't felt since she fought the king in the dark world. This time is different, though, because instead of her friends being in intense danger, it's only her. Instead of having friends at all to back her up, she was completely alone. It's far easier to muster up the adrenaline to save someone else than save yourself, she's suddenly learning. But it's better to fight than just let yourself die, so she tries to pin down where the breathing is coming from.

Doing this, however, seemed difficult to do without moving too much. The faint but concerning screaming didn't help either. And even if she did pinpoint it, what if it was too close? The only weapon she had near was the fire ax underneath her bed, but if she doesn't get to it before “it” gets to her, she could be without a weapon. Depending on her raw strength alone might work, but this thought brought upon another. She had no idea what the creature that was causing the breathing was capable of. It could we weak, incredibly strong, have a weapon that outmatches her, there were too many variables to take into account.

Unfortunately, one of these variables just got solved with three knocks at the window.

A window on the second floor of a house. Susie slowly rolls over so her back is against the wall, and looks at the moonlight coming in from the window above her. No silhouette. Three more knocks. Is this another dream? At least she knows where the breathing is coming from, but it doesn't help that whatever it is that's doing it seems to be invisible.

  
At least Susie knows for sure that it's outside, but what if it isn't the only one? What if there's more inside? And even if they aren't, if they're all outside, this means they've essentially trapped her in her own home.  
Knock knock knock.  
Damn it, sitting here and worrying about it won't do anyone any good. There are people screaming in town and you're laying in your bed all worried like this?! Get off your ass and save them. Susie mentally prepared herself as quickly as she could, rolling off of the bed and onto the floor and landing on her hands and knees. Looking underneath her bed, she grasped the gray and black handle that poked out a couple inches, pulling it towards her as she got to her feet. The blade was a bit dull, but anything can hurt someone if you swing it hard enough. Who does this invisible thing think it is?

  
“Knock again, you bastard. I dare you.” She said under her breath.

Another three knocks, but this time it came from downstairs, and was accompanied by a voice.  
“Susie? Are you there?”

That's-  
“Hazel?! Get inside, quick, I'll meet you at the door!”

This just got a lot worse. Susie could've busted the door to her room off the hinges with the speed and force she went through it. Rushing downstairs, she meets Hazel standing in the doorway leading outside.  
“Hey, what's this all abou-AAh!”  
Is all she could say before Susie pulls her in by the collar of her blue sweater and slams the door shut, blocking it with her body.

“Why are you here?”  
“I-I saw you walking out of town and got curious-”  
“You followed me?”  
“I'm sorry, I-”

“No, this doesn't even right now, don't you hear the screaming? There's people in town that need help and you followed me here?”  
“...S-Screaming? What screaming?”  
“What do you mean “what screaming”? Don't you hear the-”  
Susie stays silent for a second. It stopped. Some time in between her running downstairs and now, the screaming stopped. But there's no way she didn't hear it before, right? Some time on her walk here, she had to have heard it... right?  
“Susie... are you okay?”  
She didn't know how to answer. She just dropped her hands to her side and sat on the floor against the door.

“I...don't know. Tonight has been total shit show and I don't even know if I'm dreaming or not.”  
“Susie. Do you trust me?”  
“Yeah, why?”  
“Give me the ax. For one, it's kinda scary, and another, we need to just...calm down, okay?”  
“...Yeah, okay.”  
Not raising her head to meet her gaze in the eye, Susie held the ax up to her and let her take it from her.  
“But... why did you come here? You could've just seen me tomorrow, and asked why I left town. I probably wouldnt've lied to you, either. You even said you were tired, you should've just gone home and slept, but you followed me. Why?”

No response.

“Hazel.” She urges, looking up to see the ax in her hands, her hands and arms above her head, about to strike downward. Susie's eyes shrink, and she quickly rolls out of the way just as an the ax head lodges itself in the brittle floor. Susie crawls on her back away from Hazel, getting to her feet as quick as she could without stumbling, in complete shock.

  
“What the hell?!”  
Hazel, or whatever has taken control of her, withdraws the ax from the floor and holds it in one of her hands, still looking at the spot where Susie was just sitting. Her head then turns towards Susie's direction before the rest of her body follows suite, the now crazed bunny holding the ax above her head with one hand and sprinting towards her. Her running stops once she brings the ax downward, Susie grabbing it just below the head. She was hardly using any force to keep the ax there. It's as if she wasn't even trying.  
“What's wrong with you, Hazel?! What's gotten into you?”

That's when she noticed something she somehow hadn't before. Her pupils were glowing with a bright, white light, and she hasn't responded to anything Susie has said since she asked for the ax.  
“I don't want to hurt you, please don't make me do something both of us will regret.”

  
Hazel paid no mind to the warning, lifting the ax and attempting to strike once more. Susie, now aware of the threat, dodged it rather easily, and retaliating with a swift scratch at her face, spattering a white, glowing substance all over the surrounding area, but eliciting no reaction from Hazel herself. Susie stepped back. White, viscous liquid poured from the three deep scars in Hazel's cheek. As if such a thing wasn't even a cause for concern, Hazel continued to walk towards Susie, preparing her attack once more. It was like watching a toddler learn to walk. Almost pathetic. But whatever the case, she knew one thing.  
“You aren't Hazel at all, are you?”  
She paid no mind to Susie's words. This, oddly enough, brought a smile to her face.  
“Good.”  
Susie side-kicked the creature's midsection, sending her to the floor and loosening her grip on her weapon, the ax spinning across the floor. She looked at whatever possessed Hazel's body and cracked her knuckles.  
“That means I won't have to hold back when I thrash your ass. Now show me what you really are, you freak!” She proudly yells, bringing a foot up and stomping on it's chest, over and over, her skin getting more and more pale with each punch before her entire body, including her clothes, become white as snow. Susie steps back from her opponent, their entire chest area crushed inward and leaking a black, tar-like liquid. That same liquid covered Susie's shoe, which she tried to shake off as best she could. Turns out she could hold her own, even without an weapon, in the real world as well as the dark one.

Now, what the hell is that thing? It's body and Hazel's, before the fight started, looked completely identical. But now, their entire body was colored white. Even the clothes, which seemed to be an extension of the creature's body as well. Just another part of the disguise.  
It even talked like her.  
It's body began to make noise. A strange, crackling noise. Then, along with the crackling getting louder, came the light. A blinding, yellow light so bright Susie had to turn away and cover her eyes just to keep herself from going blind. And then, just like that, it was gone. Susie turned back towards where she was looking, only to find the body, blood, and any sign that the creature existed at all, gone.

Susie wasn't sure what to do. She certainly couldn't sleep here. Not after she just killed some albino shape shifter creature that invaded her house as one of her friends. Her home suddenly felt a lot less safe. Was any of what just happened real? Was she just going insane? She couldn't tell anyone about this, she'd sound as insane as she suspects she might be. Coupled with the fact that her only evidence it existed at all just disappeared out of thin air, she knew for a fact that no one could know about this. This had to be kept to herself.

But what happens now? She can't stay here, it'd be too dangerous after what just happened. But if not here, then where? There aren't any hotels in town, and the next nearest town is who knows how far away. She thought about hitching a ride, but in what passing cars? The road is still as closed as it ever has been Who in town would house her? Maybe Toriel? Everyone is sleeping by now. The real hazel is probably sleeping by now, and even if she knew where she lived Susie would feel guilty asking her for even more help. Could she even make it to town without being attacked? Who knows what's crawling in the woods? Susie thought she knew. Susie thought she knew a lot of things. Now she's not so sure.

She decided she would just walk upstairs and wait in her room until morning came. Susie grabbed a hold of the ax once more and walked up the stairs to the bedroom. The door was open, but at least she left it like that this time. The bed didn't seem too safe anymore, with the window right there. Boarding it up now would be too loud. She decided she'd walk into her closet, close the door, and wait. And that she did. Hiding among dirty clothes she, for some reason, bothered to hang up. An old fire ax in her hands and a stick of chalk in her teeth. Eyes peeled wide open and bloodshot. Just waiting for sunlight.

Or another knock.  
  
There was darkness for a while. Then, her body shook awake to the sight of the soft, white light of day seeping in through the shutters of the closet door. She didn't have much faith she'd make it through the night anyway. Her ax was still firmly grasped in her hands, which didn't surprise her. Even in sleep, she was still on edge.

“Well, I'm alive at least. That's a good sign.”

Why did she say that out loud?  
No one's listening.  
Hopefully.

She doesn't remember much of her night in the closet, unsurprisingly. Standing still and staring at nothing isn't the most exciting act someone could take part in. Though, now that she was awake, and day had finally come, she felt an intense relief wash over her body. Or maybe that's just the sleep deprivation drifting away. In any case, she wanted out of this closet. She awoke sitting down, so she must've either fallen asleep like this, or her legs gave out while she was sleeping and she didn't even notice.

School. Right.  
  


She wasn't sure what time it was, probably too late, but she had to go at some point. An unchewed piece of chalk rolled off of her belly and onto the floor as she stood up. Wasted chalk is no good, so she picked the stray piece off of the floor and tossed it into her mouth. Maybe today will be normal. Maybe today she won't have to kill anything. Stepping out of the closet, she looked outside and watched flakes of snow fall from the overcast sky, the sun's orange glow only barely penetrating the thick layers of cloud.  
  
It would be a calming sight if not for the fact that without heat or power she'll freeze to death in this house. She wonders how that'll work out.

But in any case, she'd best head to town. Making sure every window in the house is closed, she steps out into the hallway, and heads down the stairs. She makes a quick stop at the fridge to grab a box of chalk, only to realize she forgot it in her coat upstairs, and that she was about to walk out the door without a coat. An acquisition of a coat with a pocketful of chalk later, and Susie is on her way to the front door when a step forward plunges her foot into the floor.

Looking down at the floor where she's standing, she sees a foot has sunken into the hole left by the ax from last night. Oddly enough, her foot didn't reach any sort of ground underneath. She lets her foot go further down, expecting to find some sort of foundation, and finding no such thing. The area underneath the floor is oddly hollow. Could there be an entire area underneath the house? If so, it's not accessed by anywhere she's seen. She doesn't recall seeing a set of stairs or even a hatch that hinted at there being a basement of any kind.  
  
Seeing as how there were more pressing matters at hand, she decided to investigate this later, and stepped outside into what little cold snow had gathered outside. It made a satisfying crunch as she stepped, shutting the door behind her and beginning her all too familiar trek to school. She was trying incredibly hard to purge the memories of last night from her brain. For all she knows, it could've been an incredibly lucid dream. Maybe she was sleepwalking? Sleepdreamwalking? Whatever it was, there's no evidence of it even happening that couldnt've been caused by herself, so she decided it's best to forget it, however lucid it may have been.  
  
All you have to do is pretend you aren't totally going crazy. Couldn't be too hard.

  
The rays of light that fell through the trees were faint, but enough to give Susie a feeling of relative calm. She noticed she was taking this whole thing incredibly well, and she attributed that to having stranger things happen not even a day before. When you go into a magical infinite closet that houses an entire kingdom of light and dark, the rest of the day may seem just a little tame. By all means, she was incredibly lucky it wasn't actually Hazel inhabiting that body. If her assumption had been wrong, she may have just killed one of the only people that seems to understand her.

Maybe she should try a little more acting next time. Just in case.

A few more minutes and she's stepped onto the road leading to town. She looked up at the sun, which was already high in the sky, then looked down the road that leads out of town. A realization hit that, even though Susie had traveled this road countless times on the way to school, she had never thought to walk the other way. She was already late, so she had the time to explore it if she wanted. Then again, Kris was probably waiting at the school to go into the closet again. Maybe another time.  
  
The barrier hopping would have to end with the fall of snow. It'd be preferable to not slip and crack her head open. She walked around. Hometown was surprisingly dead for this time of day. Sure, the first day of snow always brings troubles, but usually there would be a few snow men or something around. In fact, it seems most of the people are near the school. Some sort of chatter is coming from that direction, so towards it Susie walks. It's not hard to rile up the people in this town, so it couldn't be something too crazy, right?

Seems not. When Susie turned the corner onto the street the school was on, there was a small crowd gathered around a barrier of police tape and flashing red and blue lights. Sensing a little more urgency from this, Susie breaks into a sprint until she reaches the crowd. Among the concerned faces of mothers and fathers was Hazel. The real one. She walks up to her slowly.

“Hazel?”  
She turns around and, upon recognizing Susie, a look of relief washes over her as she walks over and hugs her tightly. She's not sure how to respond for a bit, since she doesn't even remember the last time someone had shown her this much physical attention out of nowhere, but she slowly hugs her back.  
“Hazel, what happened here?”  
“Oh, it's awful Susie, there's been a terrible accident and no one knows what's going on! If they do know, they won't tell us...”  
She seems super broken up about it, her voice cracking slightly. She was clearly filled with empathy for the situation at hand, so Susie hugs her a little tighter.  
Looking past all of the miscellaneous commotion, Susie looks at the front of the school. The front doors had been blasted open somehow, and a thick looking black liquid was seeping out of the frame of the door. It looked like the insides were completely caked in the strange substance.  
  
“Holy shit. Was anybody hurt?”  
“N-None of the kids thankfully, but one of the teachers was taken to the hospital. It happened early in the morning and she was the only one in the building at the time...”  
“Who was it?”  
“I think it was a yellow lizard looking girl... I think her name was Alphys?”  
“...”  
“I hope you didn't know her too well.”  
“You said she was taken to the hospital?”  
“Y-Yeah, but don't get any ideas. A cop is guarding the room she's in and she's apparently not accepting any visitors right now.”  
“We'll see about that. Take care of yourself, Hazel.”  
Susie gives her a firm pat on the back, and quickly walks in the direction of the hospital.

She felt such a strong need to speak to her. To tell her she's sorry, or even just say anything to her. She felt responsible somehow, irrational as it may be. All those times of mistreating her and putting her through her angsty, rude bullshit all came back to her at once. She felt sick. So sick she wanted to puke. But there were more important things on her mind right now. She felt something rustling in her pocket and took out the box of chalk she'd stolen from her forever ago. It was so stupid, but this box made her feel incredibly angry. Like her own mistakes were staring her right in the face.

She looked towards the treeline at the southern edge of town and chucked the box into the trees, not giving it a single cursory glance as she turned and walked towards the hospital.

The snow crunching beneath her feet, the cold outside her body, it all faded away. She just had to see her. Doesn't matter if it's forty below, her boiling blood will keep her warm. The medical center wasn't far away at all, thankfully, so it didn't take long to reach. The front doors opened with a loud but short creak as Susie speed walked in to the receptionist's desk in the clean, white lobby. The huge mouthed monster turned towards her nonchalantly.  
“Hey, I'm looking for someone named Alphys who's supposed to be in a room here.”  
“Are you a family member or friend?”  
“I'm her student.”  
The receptionist shuffles through some paper, before sighing.  
“Sorry miss, can't let you in.”  
“What?!”  
“Only family and friends are allowed to go in.”  
“Aren't students considered friends?”  
“No.”  
“...Screw that, I'm going in.”  
Susie stomps towards the doors to where the patient's rooms are.  
“I won't stop you.”

Before she could get to the door, it opens by itself, and an incredibly tall, blue fish monster in a police uniform stands menacingly behind them.  
“But she will.”  
Undyne looks down upon Susie with a smirk.  
“Hey punk. Thought you could just go wherever you please, huh? Well I've been watching from behind this door, and I know just what you're trying to do. This isn't your world. Now-”  
Susie pretty much ignores her completely, stepping around both Undyne's body and attempts at intimidation.

  
“Wha- Get back here! I won't hesitate to put your ass in jail you little-”  
“Undyne, I don't have time for this. I'm in no mood to do this whole routine again. We don't have the best relationship or whatever, but this is more important than anything. I won't let you stand in my way. Throw me in jail if you want, after this, but I'm going to see her.”  
Susie walks in the doors, and begins to look for the right room that holds her teacher. She's looking through one of the windows to a patient's room when she feels her hands forced behind her back, and directly after, being forced to the floor by an incredible weight.

  
“You little shit. You think you can do whatever you want and get away with it. Not today.”  
The cold steel of a handcuff tightens around one of Susie's wrists as she tries but fails to struggle against the officer's mass. For such a skinny form, she knew how to keep someone pinned. This was a mistake.  
“You're going to jail for trespassing and disrespecting the law. We'll see what the boys down at the station think about your little stu-”  
“Let her go!”  
That voice... It came from one of the rooms, and sounded awfully familiar.  
“P-Please, let her see me. She's a friend, she's done nothing wrong.”

Undyne doesn't move.  
“What? I can't just-”  
“Officer, please. She meant no harm, I p-promise.”  
A minute or so passes, the other cuff not yet wrapped around Susie's wrist. Then, the wrist that is cuffed is released. The weight lifts, and Susie gets to her feet quickly. Undyne looks incredibly unimpressed.  
“It's your lucky day. But you won't get off that easy. This isn't over.”  
Undyne goes back to the lobby, slamming the door behind her.  
  
Susie releases a sigh, both of relief and exhaustion. Her and Undyne had never gotten along, and it was easy to see why. To her, she was nothing but a troublemaker. And, for what it's worth, she was pretty much right. But maybe one day, she can change that. The door to Alphy's room creaks open slowly, the fear of what may be beyond was not made hidden my any means.  
“You seem scared. D-Don't worry, I would be too.”

  
Susie, peeks into the door, seeing that her entire bed was obscured by white hospital curtains. Her heartbeat, shown through the heart monitor's beeping, was very irregular. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or even more worried by the obscuring of her body. The room was just as white and clean as the rest of the hospital, but oddly enough this room in particular had a faint smell of mold and rot. It wasn't enough to affect Susie too much, so she grabbed a metal chair from the corner of the room and sat down next to the curtains.  
  
“This is a dumb question. But, how are you feeling?”

“I'm not feeling much actually... They've got me pumped with a lot of pain killing stuff so it doesn't hurt too bad anymore, and they make me sleep as a side effect which is nice.”  
“I bet.”  
“Although, when they wear off... I can feel everything except the right side of my face. I-I hope that's just the drugs...”  
“You don't remember what happened? Where you got hurt?”  
“All I remember is looking for chalk in the closet and then... darkness. D-Darkness and pain-”  
“You don't have to go into detail if you don't want to.”  
“Sorry. I kind of have a habit of talking people's ears off...”

“It's okay.”  
Susie shifts uncomfortably in her seat, the knot in her stomach soon returning.  
“I know it was you.”

Alphys says in a monotone, tired voice.  
“Wha-”  
“You don't have to apologize or anything. It was just chalk.”  
“That's... yeah but, I was stealing from you. And I intimidated everyone in the class and made everyone uncomfortable... I just feel like you wish I had never existed sometimes because it feels like I put everyone in a bad mood a-”  
“Susie. Stop.”  
“Why?! You know it's true!”  
Susie feels tears well up in her eyes for the first time in a long time.  
“I'm not a good person, Alphys, and you know that. Sure, I'm not the same as I was yesterday but that doesn't make up for what I did to everyone... what I did to you...”

Alphys doesn't respond for a long time. Susie almost felt like leaving, but she knew that was a stupid thought.  
“I'm sorry Alphys. I didn't wanna come here and act all... like this.”  
“No, no, I-It's fine, really. You needed to get that off your chest, I can tell.”  
“I need to get a lot of things off of my chest, but that's not for now. I just want to say, that I sincerely apologize for what I did. What I have done. And I'm going to try my best to become better. For you, for Kris, for everyone.”

“...Th-Thank you Susie. I forgive you.”  
The knot untied itself.  
“Don't tell anyone this, but if you weren't all, y'know... I'd totally give you a hug right now. And I don't say that to anyone.”  
Alphys giggles.  
“I believe you.”

  
A long silence follows her words. Alphys sighs after about a minute of not so awkward silence.

“It feels like my brain is falling out.”|  
“Wait... literally?”  
“No, just... my head hurts so much. My body aches all the time and it...b-burns. Like tiny fires all over me.”  
“...”  
“Susie... Wh-what if I die?”  
“Don't talk like that.”  
“Susie, you know as well as I do that if these injuries are too severe there's a huge possibility that I might not make it.”  
“No, no it's too early to say that-”  
“It's never too early, Susie. Maybe it's too late-”  
“Stop! Please! I don't want to think about you dying...”  
“You think I do?!”  
  
Another long silence.

“Y-You're the first one that visited me today, Susie.”

“...What?”  
“All the other students are probably being kept by their parents, and I don't even know where the other teachers are...”  
“There is no way. There's no way people could be so heartless.”  
“Y-You give some people too much credit.”  
About half a minute passes before Susie hears Alphys rustling around in her hospital bed. She's about to ask what she's doing before a yellow hand shakily reaches out towards her between two curtains.  
“S-Susie...”  
“Yeah?”  
“Take my hand, p-please.”  
Without hesitation, she places her hand on hers, it being almost twice the size. She's able to lightly hold her entire hand in her own.  
“I-I need you to tell me that I'll be okay.”

“Alphys-”  
“Susie, you're the only one that hasn't acted like a robot towards me today. All these nurses, p-police officers and whatever, they're t-trained to say that to everyone but I-I really need to hear this from you right now, so p-please Susie, tell me that I'll be okay. Th-That everything will be alright. Please?”

Now both hands are shaking.  
“Alphys... Of course everything is going to be okay. They'll fix you up, you'll be better than ever and everything will go back to the way it was. You will be okay.”  
She sits in silence for one last time.  
“Thank you, S-Susie... I always knew there was a bright spot in you. It was so far away but... the light is here now.”

Alphys' hand grasps tight against Susie's, as if her life depended on it.  
  


“So...any idea how they're going to help you?”  
“They haven't said anything to me yet... and I've been asleep a lot today, so, who knows... speaking of, I feel a lot more sleepy now...”  
“Well, I gotta go visit Kris at some point today anyway... Are you sure you want me to go, though? I can stay a bit longer if you'd like.”

“That'd be very nice but... You really should go, and I really should sleep.”  
“Alright. Thank you for forgiving me.”  
“Thank you for being here. Take care of yourself...”

  
Susie left that room, unsure of how to feel but glad the interaction with her was had. She walked past Undyne on her way out.  
They didn't speak.

Cold creeping up her spine, Susie knew it would only get colder as the sun set, so she had to make it quick. Kris and Toriel's house was at the northern side of town, upon a small hill overlooking the rest of town. She knew how much they cared about each other, so having the school be in such dire circumstances probably worried them both. If people can't be expected to be safe at a school, where can they? Surely, the pair would be home, right?

A short walk up to house would prove her wrong, seeing the driveway completely barren of any vehicles, and their quaint little house's door had a small, white note on it. Getting closer, she can see the note is actually held in a small paper bag that's taped to the door. Smart woman. Susie puts a hand behind the bag and examines the note.  
  
“To Everyone:  
Dear apologies, but I am not home right now, and neither is my son. Due to the events at the school this morning, I have been called to the town hall for an important meeting, and I have taken Kris with me. Who knows how long this will last, but I simply don't feel safe leaving my child alone. I hope to be home soon, however! Hopefully. So do not worry.  
  
Regards, Toriel. <3”

Sounds like her, alright. Always put her son in front of everything. Though, that begs the question of what to do for the rest of the day. She had planned to spend the rest of the day with him, but they probably won't be out of the town hall for a while, and trespassing in two government buildings in the same day doesn't sound like a good idea. Especially considering her track record for being such a troublemaker already.  
  
Now that she thinks about it, not a lot of things are going to be open today. Most residents in this town are closely connected with each other, with this being such a small town. Maybe it would be better to head back to the house for now, wait until this whole thing blows over. But even then, what would she do there? It's not like there's many forms of entertainment in an abandoned household. She then remembers the strange, hollow spot underneath the floorboards she discovered this morning. Shortly after, the curiosity overwhelms her as it has before.

A mystery newly remembered, Susie walks away from the abandoned house, and started on her path towards the only home she's known for quite a while now. For better or worse. On the trip back, she wondered about what might've happened at the school. Did some part of the dark world spill out from the cabinet somehow? Without someone knowledgeable on the dark world like Ralsei, it could be anything. At least only one person got hurt. A shame it had to be such an innocent one, though. Of all of them, it had to be her...

Down the long abandoned road, and into the woods once more, she felt a cold wind blow across the land. Somehow, even in the thickness of the trees, she felt a dark, frozen wind hit her body. She looked upward to see a large amount of storm clouds rolling over the the sky and blocking out the sun. It was getting dark. Darker, and colder. She needed to get home, and soon. Hopefully the house would have enough insulation, and Susie would have enough blankets, to make it through the storm.  
  
The darkness was very much becoming an issue now, though. Since the forest was so dense, it may not be as dark elsewhere, but until she reached the house she'd be in an incredibly dark area. And it was very easy to lose your way without the help of the moon or sun. She had no flashlight, either. Her leisurely walk began to turn into a full on sprint, trying her best to get to the house before anything bad happened. The wind picked up even more as snowflakes began to fall at a faster pace. Thankfully, the house comes into view shortly after, and Susie barges into the house, slamming it shut behind her. Dodged the hole in the floor this time, too. She then began to rush around the house, through the kitchen, into her room and rooms she wasn't using, and everywhere else with a window, making sure they were shut tight.

The wind battered the side of the house relentlessly, creaking loudly as it tried it's best to hold itself together. Luckily enough, the house only had a light chill to it. It was, however, getting dark inside. Before long, she wouldn't be able to see anything at all. With these few moments of light left, she ran into the kitchen again, this time looking in the oven. The racks had long since been taken out, and inside was a rusted red lantern and a box of matches, among other things. She had forgotten how long it's been since she's needed to use these, since the nights have been quite clear lately and she hasn't misplaced her flashlight since now. She hopes to find it sometime soon, since she'd hate to have to get more oil for this outdated thing.  
  
Keeping everything in fridges and other defunct things was about the only safe option, since any normal cupboards that didn't just have the doors removed entirely were moldy and rotted. She could clean metal and plastic easily, but anything like that was well beyond saving. Striking a match and lighting the lantern, she proceeded upstairs. It's a good thing she's got a whole box of these things. It wouldn't do much for heat, but at least she could see where she's going more clearly. She reached the top of the stairs and went into her bedroom, placing the lantern softly on a small end table next to her bed. Looking under the frame of the bed found her looking at the ax of course, but behind that was a blue sleeping bag. She only busted this thing out at the worst of times.  
  
Dragging it out from underneath the frame, she laid a blanket upon the bed in a neat fashion, then put the sleeping bag on top of that. After slipping into the sleeping bag, she grabbed an end of the blanket and rolled over with it still grasped in her hand, wrapping herself in a cocoon of heat and comfort. She wasn't sleepy, since despite the darkness it was still only a little after noon. This storm would make it hard to do anything, but staying wrapped up here and waiting till everything blew over seemed as good a plan as any. Susie blew the lantern out from her bed, and rolled onto her back, looking at the ceiling as the wind blew against her house, as if trying to blow it far, far away.

It was going to be a long day.

It took dedication, but even without much to do but stare at the ceiling, Susie managed to stay awake through the day, even when if the storm hasn't let up since then. These types of storms always made her at peace, in a way. Finding peace in the chaos. Apart from that, this kind of weather was pretty rare, even at this time of year when rough storms are to be suspected. Though, with how dark the clouds were, she couldn't tell exactly what time it was. Whether it was the moon or sun, it would be blotted out anyway.  
  
One thing she knew for sure, though, is that she was getting quite tired. So that could mean it's either around night time, or her sleep schedule is completely screwed. She guessed the latter of the two. She was up until past midnight last night, and went to sleep until... She really needs to get a watch. Even a clock, or anything that keeps her from guessing. Though, she knew if it was time to sleep, it was time to sleep. She'll worry about the consequences and fix her sleep later, but for now, sleep calls. All it took was for her to roll over, and it took mere moments before she drifted off into unconsciousness.

Darkness once again. But no screams. No feeling of falling. Only darkness, and the feeling of existing in nothing but a void.

Then, moonlight flooded her eyes as she opened her eyelids. Pale, blue and bright, shining right through the window, yet the sound of wind and snow outside didn't stop. She attempted to sit up in her bed, only to realize that she couldn't move a muscle. It's not as if she was stuck, or being held down by anything, no, she couldn't move a single inch. Her breathing quickened as her eyes darted around the room for the reason she was forced into submission, but found nothing of the sort. She was helpless. Alone. Unarmed. Vulnerable.  
  
Try as she may, she couldn't shake herself from whatever this was. Was this sleep paralysis? She heard something about it in school once, about how people couldn't move when they were between sleeping or waking up. But this felt different somehow. Something deep in her gut told her that she was in danger. She had to get away, out of here, but she couldn't. Then, a sound reached her ears that she wished she'd never hear in the night again.

  
Knock, knock, knock. This time, though, it was on the door instead of the window. And this time, they let themselves in.

Susie's eyes were forced to look at the ceiling by a force inside her body that wasn't hers. Her breathing quickened rapidly, feeling the presence of something in her room. Something that was slowly getting closer. From what little she could see in in her peripheral vision, there was an all white, incredibly tall, and featureless humanoid that had a slight glow emanating off of it's body. It had a striking resemblance to the mimic Susie had fought just the night before. It moved silently, even though she could barely make out it's legs moving toward her.

She had no other options but to lay there in complete terror. She could feel it standing at her bedside, yet she couldn't see a thing but the dull glow it created. Until she noticed a white, bony, shaking hand with skin stretched so tight she could see the skeleton underneath. The hand hovered over Susie's eyes, shaking slightly, slowly making groping motions at the air. Then, the hand descended, and all went black. She felt herself being pulled from her sleeping bag, out into the air, through the roof, and high into the sky, far above the storm, levitating upwards at such an extreme speed that it made her eyes sting.  
  
Then, she stopped, hovering still in the air as if she was being held up by some invisible force. Her limbs were levitated in an outstretched X position, and although every other part of her body was stiff, her head was now back in her control. She looked downwards towards the swirling, black clouds below. Then, they looked towards the light of the moon. It was full tonight. Just as the night before. The screaming started again. The tortured, pained wails of dozens, maybe even hundreds of monsters and humans alike. The sound came from the moon, but it was in her head. She wanted it to stop. She needed it to stop before she went insane. Her screams were added to the cacophony as she fell back down into the sinister clouds below, never reaching the bottom of the storm clouds until-  
  
Susie awoke screaming, and shot up with such a jolt that it shook her out of her bed and onto the floor. Her eyes were darting around out of instinct, heart pounding and lungs working overtime to keep her breathing regulated. She crawled back onto the bed hurriedly, but not before snatching the ax underneath the bed. Looking around the room, she could see nothing out of the ordinary. Her window had not moved, and was letting in the soft orange glow of an early morning. Her door was closed, as she remembered leaving it. Nothing was out to get her. Just another nightmare.

  
Susie slowly calmed herself down. This was the last straw. She didn't care where she went or how she got there, she knew she would not spend another night in this house. She went into her closet, found an old duffle bag that she'd been storing in case something happened, and started packing her things. The ax was a must, of course. In fact, she decided to keep it out of the duffle bag. Just in case. Then, came the clothes, which she had too many of, too many dirty, ripped, garbage clothes. Whatever, she'd get new ones wherever she could. Did she need anything else? The lantern and match box sure but does she really own so little? That only takes up not even half of the bag, and...

...She stopped. She thought about all of this for a second.

Think logically. Is it really that weird that after traveling to a different dimension, almost dying there a couple times, and coming back pretty much in one day, she would have a nightmare or two? The only real, palpable thing that's happened so far is the school incident, but for all she knows that could be, and seems to be completely unrelated to the house. Sure, that whole thing with the mimic happened, but recurring nightmares and sleepwalking aren't too uncommon...

There's just a lot of... really weird shit happening right now. There's no reason to run away like a coward. And even if there was something happening here, would she really want whatever is tormenting her to win so easily? She put everything back in it's original place, then threw the duffle bag back into the closet confidently. Nah, she'll be fine. The hell could beat up someone like her? Sure in the dark world she had help, but if she really wanted to, she could beat up anyone she wanted here. Her confidence and a little ego restored, she threw on her coat. Might as well head to town again, since she sure as hell didn't want to stay here. Susie walked out of her room, down the stairs, and into the cold air once again.

The storm had stopped, and the morning sky was the clearest she's seen in a long time.

A striking lack of plans was the only reason Susie had a slight reluctance to head to town. She could head to the diner and visit with Hazel, since she hasn't seen her in a while, and felt sorta bad about leaving her yesterday. Surely she understood, right? She had thought she made it abundantly clear she had something important to attend to, but maybe she got mixed signals? Only one way to find out, she thought, speed walking down the path she'd walked innumerable times already. Her crunchy footsteps and the soft sound of tree branches waving in the wind were the only sounds that accompanied her on this journey. And after last night, there was no shortage of snow.  
  
In fact, now that she payed more attention to her surroundings, she found a lot of the trees had a small layer of ice forming on the sides, corresponding with the direction the wind was blowing last night. About what she was expecting from a storm that rough. This also meant she'd been walking through pretty thick snow, and she didn't really notice till now. Her feet and general size was taller than average though, so it took less for her to notice. Which meant it must be pretty bad for some of the smaller monsters.

As she exited the treeline and onto the road, she caught a glimpse of a blue truck outfitted with a large snow plow driving down the road towards the school, a huge amount of snow gathered at the front of the truck. If she recalled correctly, that was truck was owned by Kris's dad. He ran a flower shop she'd never been inside before, and had no reason to start visiting either. For this reason, she knew way less about him than Toriel. At the very least, he seemed like a friendly guy.

Trudging through the snow to the barrier, and into town, she made her way past the police station and to the hospital. She had planned to visit Alphys, visit Kris, head to the diner to calm down a little, then head back. Though, seeing Kris' dad's truck made her think of something. She ran to where she last saw the truck heading, and caught up to it in record time. Though, record time isn't exactly impressive when your town has about six roads to it's name. The truck was about the loudest thing in town. Whenever it was on, you knew. Whether you wanted to or not. She ran up to the window of the truck's driver side and knocked with a bit of impatience. The window rolled open and a gruff looking, older goat monster with a bushy, blonde beard and sunglasses looked from the opening.

“Uhh, howdy? How can I help you, young lady?”  
“Hey, you run the flower shop, right? Up by the northern end of town?”  
“Mhmm, but I'm a little busy right now...”  
“Great, I was wondering if you had any deals for free flowers. It's for a friend in the hospital, and I think she might appreciate them.”  
“Erm... Gosh, I can't really turn someone away if they're getting flowers for a friend... Wait, you said they were in the hospital?  
“Yeah, why?”  
“Well, a friend of mine is in the hospital too. Well, not really a friend. In fact, we barely even know each other. But I heard she was in quite the accident, so I tried to bring her flowers. But then, this mean police officer wouldn't let me through! She wouldn't even pass the flowers onto her! I couldn't believe it. Passing down a perfectly good bouquet...”  
Susie suspected they might be talking about the same “friend”.

“I know exactly who you're talking about. I got past her yesterday though, and I'm sure I could try again today, too. But I'm pretty much broke right now, and... I hate this, but I would really like it if you could lend me a hand.”  
  


The large man in the truck thought for a moment, then nodded.  
“Alright, I suppose I could part with a bouquet. But just this one time! I don't want you young ones to get in the habit of expecting everything in life to be free!”  
“Hah, trust me, neither do I.”  
He reached around to his backseat, yelling something back to her.  
“Any particular color you got in mind?”  
“Yellow, please.”

“The name's Asgore, by the way!”  
“Thanks, Asgore. You're a good guy.”  
“Aww shucks, I try.”  
Returning from his daring escapade to the back seat, he extends a hand to Susie, and in it, he holds a large bouquet of yellow flowers of which she didn't know the na-  
“One bouquet of daffodils, served up!”  
Well that solves that. Susie took the daffodils from his large, fluffy hand, and held them tight. She smiled with genuine appreciation.  
“Thanks again, I won't forget this.”  
“No problem. Now, I gotta get back to work on these roads. Get a pair of sunglasses, will ya? Don't want you to get snow-blind!”  
  


He smiles, rolling his window back up and continuing his task of clearing away snow. She wondered if snow blindness was that serious, or if it was just a dad joke that didn't land quite well. Whatever the case, the time had come to visit Alphys once again. She knew it wasn't going to be the most positive of experiences. It could, in fact, be far worse depending on how her condition has held up. But she knew she needed to see her anyway. It was only right that she would.

It was a brisk walk down to the hospital that took no time at all, the front doors swinging open once more as Susie noticed the lack of any signs of Undyne. Could she be hiding again? The receptionist was still there at least, so she walked up to her.  
“Hey. Undyne still here?”  
“Nah. She's detained at the station right now.”  
“You're joking.”  
“Nope. Surprisingly enough, as illegal as it is to defy an officer, it's also preeetty illegal to force a minor to the ground when they show no signs of wanting to fight you, let alone swearing and yellin' at them. She's in some deep shit right now. They were supposed to send a different officer to guard here, but they haven't shown up yet.”  
She wasn't sure how to feel about this.  
“Well...am I still not allowed in?”  
“Nah, You can go in. I just won't tell anyone.”  
“What if you lose your job?”  
“They wouldn't fire me over something like this. Just go on through.”  
“...Thanks.”  
“Just go already, geez.”  
She took this as her cue to leave. Through the doors to the patient rooms again, she looked walked up to Alphys' room and took a deep breath. She knew she had pretty much nothing to fear, but she also knew this was going to be rough. She closed her eyes, daffodils clutched in one hand and a fist clenched in the other, she opened the door to her room slowly. She wasn't prepared for what she saw inside.  
  
Most of the room was exactly how it was before. It was the area around the bed and curtains that unsettled her the most. She could only see the legs of the hospital bed from under the curtains, and from the bed was leaking black, incredibly fluid liquid. The area on the floor surrounding the bed was pitch black, slick with whatever black fluid was coming from the bed itself. Any transparency the curtains may have had before is gone now, as they were now completely dark. A garbage can on the far end of the room was filled to the brim with bandages, that same dark substance covering them.  
But all of that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the smell.

The entire room reeked of rot, mould and death. The air was so stuffy with the scent that it was difficult to breathe, and so thick that if her hands stopped shaking, she could cut it with a knife. It hurt to even be in the room, let alone sit close to the bed. But... Alphys was her friend. She couldn't let this get in the way. She would go through much more than this.  
  
She slowly walked into the room. It got even worse as she heard soft sobbing coming from the bed. Then, a gasp.

“H-Hello?”  
She had trouble bringing the words from her stomach out of her mouth.  
“...Hey Alphys.”

“S-Susie! You c-came back!”  
“Alphys... What happened to you?”  
“I-... Wh-What do you mean?”

Alphys seemed to be slurring her words sometimes, mispronouncing them at others.  
“Your bed? The dark stuff everywhere?”  
“I-I have no idea what you're t-talking about... I can't see anything because of the bandages...can't feel anything either, or smell, even...j-just hearing...  
...Susie?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Why are you so far away?”  
She hadn't noticed she was still standing in the doorway. Alphys' voice began to crack.

“A-Are you afraid of me?”  
“Alphys... Of course not...” She lied.  
“Th-Then come closer, p-please...”  
She reluctantly got closer. She both wanted to be nowhere and anywhere but here. She wanted to help so badly but she wanted to run away and block this entire room from her mind. She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be a coward.  
“D-Don't lie to me, Susie... I-It's bad, isn't it...”  
“I don't know. I can't see past the curtains.” she choked out, the smell so severe she was trying her best to hold down the bile rising up to her mouth.  
“Th-Then tell me...”  
Susie's eyes widened. She saw a small, frail, malnourished yellow hand reach out from behind the curtains. She felt her heart drop into her stomach. The curtains were pulled back slowly. It felt like all of the oxygen left her lungs. Out of the room itself. Nothing left to breathe. She looked down upon the bed, the curtain now pulled back all the way. Everything stopped.  
  
“H-How b-bad is it?”

Everything from her nose and above was completely gone. And it wasn't as if it was cut off, it's as if it was being rotted away by a pure black liquid that caked the entire upper half of her face. This same substance leaked out of her mouth, the one she surely couldn't feel any part of, and that was surely the reason for her impaired speech. The substance leaked an incredible amount from her head, the pillow she was resting it on being completely pitch black. The rest of her body, though covered by a patient's gown, was frail, skinny and weak. She looked like she hadn't eaten in a week, yet it had only been since yesterday morning that the incident occurred.  
  
Alphys attempted to lift the upper half of her body up, as if it was going to help her situation at all. She looked right in Susie's direction, her arms shaking and vibrating just from having to support her own weight.  
  
“S-Susie...p-please talk to me...”  
Her eyes watered at the sight of her. Of her deplorable condition. She began shaking as well, covering her mouth in an attempt to stop the vomit surely rising into her esophagus. She couldn't do it. It was too much. She had to leave. This was too real. This was too much. She dropped the flowers on the floor, and bolted out of the room, Alphys' screaming and crying and begging for her to come back as she slammed the door behind her only making her want to puke more. Out the front doors, into the street, over the barrier, down the road. She missed the path to her house. She didn't care. She needed to leave. To go as far away from there as possible. Get away, get away, get away.  
  
She tripped and fell into the snow, falling on one of her knees and scraping it pretty badly, falling on all fours and watching the white, cold powder that filled her vision slowly get wasted away and replaced by the vomit that was forced from her mouth. She vomited non stop for about a minute or two straight before falling to the ground in tears, laying in a puddle of melted snow and her own sick. She felt ashamed, terrified, alone and afraid. She felt like she was going to puke her organs right out of her maw. It hurt so terribly to see her like that. And she ran away when she needed her most. Fucking coward.  
  
And yet, she did nothing. She simply continued to cry as the sun beat down on her body, covered in gray bile and water, mind racing, heart pounding, lungs stinging.  
  
The fresh air should've been relieving. But it was nothing but a reminder of her mistakes and cowardice.

The pain seared her mind like no other feeling had a hope to. The pain of regret. Hopelessness. Then, darkness. Somehow, sometime after lying there in the snow, she fell asleep. She wasn't sure how, or why, since what she had seen just minutes before should've kept her up for days. Exhaustion must have hit her like a truck. Funnily enough, no nightmares or dreams invaded her mind this time. Ironically enough, it was one of the best rests she's had in a long time. If only the relief had lasted.  
  
Susie still felt the snow beneath her body as she tried her best to open her eyes and shake herself from sleep. Planting a hand on the ground to push herself into a sitting position, she looked around at her surroundings. She wasn't where she fell asleep. Not in the slightest. She had been moved to a large clearing, surrounded by nothing but dense, dark forest. It had to be around midnight, as the moon was high in the sky. Realizing this, she got to her feet and looked around for a weapon of some sort to use against her kidnapper. She found no such thing.  
  
What she did find however, is a shocking lack of footprints of any kind, signs that a body was dragged or carried, or anything of the sort. The snow was untouched except for the markings Susie herself made. The imprint of her body, a few panicked steps of looking around, and that was all. The snow had stopped a while ago, and even if accumulated snow could obscure tracks, there should be a little bit of evidence at least. But instead, nothing. It's as if she was placed there from above.  
  
But the only thing above her... was the moon.  
  
She felt a great sense of unease. As if she was being watched. But this wasn't a normal suspicion, this feeling was heavy and potent, As if she was standing in the middle of a crowd of invisible people. She had to get out of here, but where to? Her sense of direction was completely gone. She wasn't even aware of her location. She supposed she could climb a tree? Maybe she could spot the way to town that way. She takes a few steps towards the treeline before she feels a bony, incredibly large hand grasp at her ankle. She looks down to see... Herself.

A version of herself, in the same clothing, laying on the ground with a hand firmly grasped around her ankle. Susie shook herself free from her grasp as her doppelganger looked at her with the same pale whiteness in her eyes that the Hazel look-alike donned. Susie backed away, unsure of how to proceed. Was this another dream? If so, just like all the others, it was incredibly convincing. The creature wearing Susie's skin got up to it's feet, shaking and and mumbling incoherently to itself, and trying it's best to maintain eye contact with her.

“What the hell are you?!” She yelled at the creature in front of her. She was granted no response, instead, she tried to speak once more. Though, all that came out was an incomprehensible and pained string of something that only resembled words. Suddenly, she began to sprint towards Susie at an alarming speed, tackling her to the ground with a surprising amount of ease. Once on the ground, the creature brings a fist back and readies a punch, attempting to strike Susie's face. Susie, seeing the attack coming from a mile away, catches the fist, and attempts to get her feet underneath it's body. Once doing so, she uses both legs to kick it off of her, sending her about a meter away before landing with a thud in the soft snow. Susie gets to her feet quickly while the other creature seems to be having trouble even getting on it's knees. She was about to walk over to give it a stomping much like the last one of these she encountered, when she's blinded by a flash of light and forced backwards by an incredible wave of energy so powerful even the snow is picked up and blasted away from it's source.

Once she regains her sight, she looks back to where she was walking to see that directly behind the skin stealer an incredibly tall, completely white humanoid figure stood, looking down at it. The tall being bent down and used one of it's skinny, frail, but large looking hands to grasp at the look-alike's entire skull in it's grasp. It bent back up and held the creature up in the air before it crushes it's skull in one swift clench of it's fist, spraying somewhat familiar white blood all around the area. It looks at the now limp body, and throws it to the side, almost as if it did so with great disgust. And then, as much as she wish it hadn't, it turned it's non existent gaze towards Susie.  
  
She recognizes this creature as the one from the dream she had the night before. The one that brought her into the sky.  
  
Susie backs away, and for the first time in her life, feels completely hopeless against the enemy before her. She knew it had the strength to crush that thing's skull like it was nothing, and considering she had no idea what the thing even was, she suspected it could be capable of much more than just that. Her suspicions were soon confirmed, for as soon as it pointed it's open palm toward her, her body froze just as it had in the dream. The dream which she then realized was anything but fiction. Part of her knew that was the case, but tried it's best not to believe it.

Susie is then pulled forwards and upwards, towards the being so that her head was at the same level as his. Now that she was up close, she figured it was nearly three times as tall as she was. She stood there, motionless in the air and with no other choice but to stare down the blank, featureless face in front of her. With great effort, she tried to work against this being's power and forced a simple question out of her mouth.  
  
“Wh...What are you?!”  
  


It's white, scrawny hand came into her vision, and grasped at her face as she felt not the crushing of her skull, but messages, words and letters penetrate directly into her mind. The creature spoke inside of her head, speaking in formless words to not pursue interaction with “the afflicted” any longer, lest more of who she holds dear suffer the same fate. She was told warnings of terrible happenings that would befall her if she were to meander where she did not belong. She was told to leave, and get as far away from the town as possible.

Susie fell to the ground, mind still swimming with information as the being begins to walk away. She quickly gets to her feet and yells at it.  
  
“If you think you're gonna stop me from seeing my friends, you're dead wrong.”  
The being stops, and turns back towards her.  
“Yeah, you heard me. You can punish me however you want, but nothing's going to stand between my friends. You just expect me to run away with my tail between my legs?”

This time, only a single, conceited phrase forced it's way into her head.  
“Like you did with Alphys?”  
  


She freezes in her place, the correct response escaping her. The being turns it's back to her and disappearing in the same flash of light that it appeared in. The moon's light in the clearing brightened, her looking up into it's magnificently blinding light, not finding the strength to look away, no matter how much it hurt. The light engulfed her entire being, everything in her vision disappearing until there was nothing but a pale blue light.  
It was beautiful.

She awakened slowly, opening her eyes.

“Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist!  
Keep on loving, keep on fighting!”

She was in bed again, back at home. She looked around the room, looking for anything that may have been out of the ordinary, and finding no such thing. Her clothes were still wet from the snow. Susie looks out the window, seeing the red, early morning sunrise peek over the horizon. Almost an entire day had went by. It was already tomorrow when yesterday felt like it was only moments before. She wasn't sure what was slipping more, the time, or her sanity. She had to talk to someone about this. But what about the warning? What if she isn't going crazy? Would even going to town at all be too close for that strange being's liking? Would stepping a foot beyond the barriers put all of her friends in danger? And even if she did make it to town, what would she do? Who was she close enough to emotionally that would be able to help? Maybe someone at the church? Or maybe...

  
Kris. Kris and Toriel surely had advice for her. Mostly Toriel, but after not seeing him for three days, she would really appreciate a familiar face. Even if said person doesn't talk much. Susie decided that, as hard as it would be, what, with the hospital being on the way to Toriel's house, she would avoid it at all costs. Susie could only assume that Alphys is what it meant by “The Afflicted”. If it meant not seeing her to save the rest of her friends, as tough as it would be, she would have to comply. She knew what kind of power that thing had. It could probably wipe the entirety of Hometown out by itself, let alone if there were multiple of them. Better to be safe than sorry.  
  
Besides... after yesterday, what makes her think Alphys would want to see her again at all?

  
Since she already had her coat on, she figured no preparation was needed, and that she could head to town right now. Susie walked out her door, down the stairs, and sunk a foot through the floor right before the front door. She looks down at her submerged foot, and lifts it out of the hole. Then, she remembered. It wasn't late in the day at all yet. It would probably be a while before everyone woke up. Maybe now would be best to figure out why exactly there's a vacant space underneath her house. She looked to her left, and walked towards an empty room, deliberately stomping to make sure the floor was still hollow. She decided that bashing a hole right next to her front door wouldn't be the brightest of ideas.  
  
Finding that the floor kept it's hollow nature all the way to that room, she made a quick trip upstairs, grabbed the ax, and returned. Without further distractions, she swung the ax directly into the floorboards below, breaking them rather easily, and making a hole that would easily fit her, trying not to get herself hit by debris in the process. With the hole haphazardly made, she took a piece of wood from next to the hole and dropped it down, it hitting the floor rather quickly. Figuring that she could probably just drop down there and be able to jump back up, she disregarded the thought of having a rope or something to climb back up with. It was, however, rather dark. Another short trip upstairs and back granted her a lantern which she lit, and a matchbox which she stuffed into her coat pocket.

Susie crouched on the edge of the hole, and without much hesitation, jumped into the dark, unexplored depths of the basement she never knew existed, and she could only hope she was ready to face whatever mysteries lie below.

A soft thud echoed through the stale air as Susie landed on the smooth concrete foundation of the house. Inhaling only a little sent her into a coughing fit, her landing unsettling the huge amount of dust and flinging it into the air. It was already incredibly obvious that no one had been here for a very long time. She managed to not slam the lantern into the cement, which was a good start, as without it, she wouldn't be able to see her surroundings. Not that there was much to see, mind you. Nothing but darkness and cement floor in every direction, leaving Susie with a distinct feeling of being watched. The space underneath here was surprisingly large and vacant. Of course, what she could see wasn't exactly accurate to what was actually in the room, so she moved towards the front of the house.

Interestingly enough, where the front wall of the house would be wasn't where the room stopped. The foundation went far past it. Before she went too deep into the darkness, she turned back and headed towards the back end of the house instead, not wanting to get too far away and not have explored every inch of this place. There were light bulbs on the roof strung along by wires, but this place had lost power long ago, so she didn't think to look for a light switch.

Using the hole she made in the floor as a point of reference, she walks back from where she came, then further still to the back end of the house. It was suffocatingly dark, and combined with the dust, it made it both mentally and physically hard to breathe. But she wasn't about to let a few dust particles get in the way of her exploration, so she kept walking. Her loud footsteps echoed across the room. It sounded more like she was in a gym or something. How large was this room?

She only noticed something on the ground when she got close enough that she almost tripped on it. Bending down to look at the object, it seemed to be a small record player, tipped over on it's side. It's obviously stopped working a long time ago, but the wood was oddly well preserved. Though the needle for it was broken off and missing. She wondered if there was some way to increase the light's radius on her lantern, looking around and under it's base. She found a small black nob that she had somehow not noticed before, and turned it clockwise. The light got significantly brighter, allowing her to see further into the darkness, so that hopefully she wouldn't have a close call like that again.

Continuing on into the darkness seemed like a great idea at first, before she saw a wall impede her progress. No windows or doors, just a flat gray wall. The most sound option would probably be to walk along the wall, and that's exactly what she did. She quickly came upon a rusted, red, metal ladder that lead up to a small hatch in the ceiling. Where could this lead? And why wouldn't she have noticed a hatch upstairs before? Susie sets the lantern down next to the base of the ladder and, with a short climb up, reaches the top. She attempts to push the hatch upward, only to have it get stuck with just a crack between the floor and the hatch. Susie painstakingly tries to peek through this small crack, and she can almost recognize the room she looks into. Then, it hits her.

This hatch was directly underneath the oven. She was looking between the tiny space between the floor and the bottom of the defunct oven, it's base slightly raised by small plastic legs on it. Now, her not finding any kind of entrance to the basement made sense, since she had never moved any of the furniture or appliances since she moved into there. Really, who would with the expectation that they'd find a secret floor?  
  
Speaking of that, the fact that this floor was kept secret in the first place really put Susie on edge, the only fact calming her down being that she had never once heard noises from below the floorboards. So whatever was once here, has been gone for as long as she's been here. So that either means that they left this place a long time ago... Or they were taken by something down here. Not as comforting now that she thought about it. She kind of missed when she thought less and smashed things more. Maybe she was happier like that.

Closing the hatch back down, and jumping off the ladder, she grabbed the lantern once again, and continued to walk along the wall. There was surprisingly little in this room, which left her in an awkward state of disappointment and relief. Of course, with nothing much to see, she began to think again. About the secrecy. It was always a possibility that the kitchen was always arranged the way it is now, but what if it had been rearranged to hide the place better? If it had always been like that, then it was convenient that you wouldn't have to do much to hide the entrance. If it had been moved to accommodate for it, then what was so important and dangerous about this place that they had to move a heavy steel oven over the entrance? More thinking still wasn't doing her any good. The only things she's found so far are small intercom speakers in the corner of the room.

At least she found something more interesting with more walking, though. It took a bit more time than she'd wished, but Susie discovered a large, reinforced, rusty metal door at the furthest end of the room, towards the front end of the house that she refused to explore earlier. Not only was it a rather heavy looking door already, but there was also a large metal bar keeping the door closed. Whoever put this here, without a doubt, did not want whatever rested beyond this door to get past it...

Did she really need to see what was behind there? Her confidence in her combat abilities were still strong as ever, and assuming that anything but a tall, white, teleporting demigod was behind this door, she was pretty sure she could take on whatever she came across. She gathered up a bit of courage, and attempted to slide it out of the door's way. It didn't budge whatsoever. Examining the bar a little closer, she only now noticed that the bar was bolted directly into the cement. She had confidence in her strength, but she knew her limits, and that door was simply not getting opened right now. She was sure that whoever closed this door had no intention to ever open it again.

She turned her back to the door, and immediately wished she hadn't. Because the hole she made in the floor above was shining a bit more light down into the darkness of the basement, and in front of that light was a vaguely humanoid silhouette. Her muscles tensed up. It was about the same size as Susie, but that was all she could determine from the shadow alone. She wasn't sure what to do. Actually, no. She knew exactly what to do, and it for sure wasn't let whoever this is get under her skin.  
  
“You better get the hell out of here! This is my house!”  
  
No response. As expected. She began walking towards them, holding the lantern out in front of her.  
  
“Did you hear me, freak?! Get out!”  
  
As soon as the last word exited her mouth, she was shocked to find the lights on the ceiling flicker on, as well as the shadow mysteriously vanishing, and the intercom in the corner of the room blaring some heavily distorted song she didn't recognize. The room was revealed to be almost completely empty, save for the record player she had already found, and a large, rectangular hole in the very middle of the room that she was extremely lucky to have not fallen into when she was in the dark. Susie stepped cautiously to the edge and looked downward towards the bottom.

Or, the lack of one, since even with all the lights turned on, there didn't seem to be a visible bottom to the hole. The one thing she did notice about the hole, though is that the area around it smelled... familiar. It only took her a short moment to realize where she recognized the smell from, and memories of her experience at the hospital yesterday came rushing back. Her pupils shrunk as she stepped back, just in time for the radio began to play a little more clearly. It was mildly difficult to hear, but she definitely understood the lyrics, even with the distortion and the pitch shifted lower.

  
“There's nobody here.  
It's just you and me.

It's where I wanna be.

And I hardly know...

This beauty by my side...

I'll never forget-  
never forget-  
never forget-  
never forget-  
never forget-”  
  
Susie didn't care if the song skipping was a coincidence or some sinister joke by whoever was controlling this place, but she knew the house had officially become unsafe. She sprinted towards the hole she made and jumped upwards, reaching the floor above quickly. She could still hear it. She took the ax in one hand, and the lantern in the other. Running hastily upstairs and into her room, she turned the lantern off, nearly threw it into a duffle bag along with the ax. Looking at the poster above her bed, she took out the thumbtacks holding it to the ceiling, rolled it up, and slid it into the bag as well.

After this, she zipped up the bag, swung it over her shoulder, and ran as fast as she could out of the house, making extra sure to jump over the hole near the front door. Who cares where, she could live in the street for all she cared. But it was too much now. The power switching on, the door, the radio, the mysterious, bottomless pit... The fact that she had been living in that house for so long without even knowing any of it was below her.  
  


It was just too much.

Any distance to travel seems doable when you have fear to keep you sprinting. That's why it only took Susie about half the time it usually does to reach Hometown. In record time, she was already past the barriers and standing in the middle of town. It was still very early, so no one was quite up yet. The town felt abandoned. Lifeless. It was too early for any normal person to be up, but maybe Hazel opened the diner at this hour? She really needed a watch. She really needed a lot of things. A lot of things normal people have that she didn't for whatever reason.

She took a left turn straight to QC's Diner, and as she got closer, found that the place was, thankfully, open for buisness. She wondered how early in the morning it was, exactly. She's sure she could ask Hazel when she gets inside, though. Escaping from the cold air outside, she stepped into the diner, the lights flickering on while a familiar purple bunny monster walked out of the back room. Her eyes lit up when she saw Susie.  
  
“Susie!”  
“Yeah, hey.” she nonchalantly responds, sitting on a bar stool.  
“I haven't seen you in a few days, where have you been?”  
“I, uhh-”  
“And what's with the bag?”  
“I've been... busy. And the bag is for all my stuff.”  
A look of concern covers her face.  
“So... you got kicked out?”  
“I guess you could say that.”

“... Aww hell, I'm sorry hun.”

“Nah, don't be. It's for my own good.”  
“Well, do you have anywhere else in mind to stay?”

“I haven't gotten that far yet. I'll figure it out, though.”

“Kicked out, and not even given anywhere to go... your parents must be terrible people.”  
  
...Her parents...

“Yeah...”  
“Well... it isn't much, but I've got an apartment room on the east side of town. It's small and, really the only place for you to sleep would be the couch, but it wouldn't feel right for me to let the chance go unoffered to ya. There's a sweet lady under there, and you need to be given a chance. And unfortunately, there's a lot of... stupid, for lack of a better term, people around here that can't see what I do.”  
Not a single adequate response entered her head. She had never stayed with anyone else before. She thought of confirming with her that this was the choice she wanted to make, but she already knew that if she had her mind on something, she wouldn't let go. Susie nodded.  
“Yeah. If it's alright with you, I'd really like that.”  
“Of course! It gets a bit lonely in there by myself anyway. Just go on into building number three, and ring up apartment number 509. It's Saturday, so I close shop at around seven o-clock. If you're around, meet me here and we'll walk together.”  
  
It was Saturday?

“Alright, I'll try to make it here in time.”  
“Don't sound too excited.” Hazel said in a teasing manner.  
“Uh, sorry, I-”  
“Ah, don't worry about it. Was just jokin' around. Besides, you look like ya need a good laugh.”  
Susie truly tried to not look blankly at her, but she was too exhausted to do much else.  
“Hazel.”  
“Yeah?”  
“What time is it?”  
“About nine o-clock.”  
“Alright, I'll be back in... probably a couple hours or so. I'm gonna go visit Kris and Toriel, It's been a while.”  
“Alright. Don't be off too long again!”  
“I'll try. And, thank you.”  
  
With nothing but a smile and a nod as a response, Susie stepped back out into the cold morning air. It was getting even colder, now. Seemed that even in the morning, her breath was visible. It was a good thing that she got out of that house when she did, even disregarding the basement. It only getting colder, and with no power... well, that she knew how to activate, anyway, the place would be a freezer in a little over a week.

It was about time to stop stalling, though. With her duffle bag slung over her shoulder, Susie trudged off to Toriel's house, only taking a few minutes at a swift walking pace. This time, the van was in the driveway, so she knew for a fact Toriel had to be home. Where else would she be on a Saturday morning? Susie walked up to the door of their homely place, and knocked three times gently. She heard some shuffling from inside, then the door opened slowly to reveal the goat mother she had only rarely seen in passing.

“Hello?” Toriel said, smiling worriedly out the door, before noticing who it was that stood before her.  
“S-Susie?”  
“Hey, miss Dreemur.”  
“Uhm, hello Susie. If I may ask, what is your business here?”

“I was, uhh, just around the area and thought I'd drop by and see Kris.”  
Toriel's eyes widened, but not with a look of concern, just of surprise.  
“So... y-you're the 'friend' that Kris was with the other day?”  
“Mhmm.”  
“Never talk to him again.”  
She was about to slam the door, but Susie instinctively put her foot in it.  
“Miss Dreemur, please, I know I've been a bad kid, and you have every right not to trust me, but I've changed, I promise. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Kris, and I for sure wouldn't have changed without him.”

“If you know I have no right to trust you, why are you even here?”  
“Because... because I'm trying to put my past behind me. I don't wanna be that troublemaker from before that everyone's afraid of. Thinking about it makes me sick, sometimes. I want to change, not just for myself, but for the better of everyone else... but, Miss Dreemur, I can't do that if you don't give me a chance.”  
A dreadfully long silence followed as neither moved from their position. It took an uncomfortable amount of time, but Toriel opened the door, and stepped aside.  
“Come inside. It's quite cold out. Don't make too much noise, Kris is still asleep.”  
“Thank you.”

Susie stepped inside, taking her shoes off and placing them on a rack when she almost walked right inside with muddied, wet shoes. She looked around the comfortable looking, well furnished living room. She's forgotten the last time she's been in a house that looked this...lived in. It felt surreal. Like she didn't belong there. It was too nice.

“Well, have a seat.” Toriel urged as she sat down on a small seat next to a turned off television. Susie sat down on a couch on the other side of the room, trying to be as polite as she could. If she wanted to stay friends with Kris, she knew she had to make a good first impression. Toriel spoke before Susie even had a chance to think of what to say.  
“So. You were the one that 'hung out' with my child.”  
“Yes.”  
Toriel looks grave for a small moment, but smiles shortly after.  
“Heh... you know, the night after he came home, I grounded him for being away for so long without calling me. I was worried sick. But... the night he came home, even though I had punished him... there was this aura around him. It was like he had completely changed. And, seeing it was you... makes me surprised that the change felt like a positive one. Even the morning after, he got up for school on his own accord. He looked happy, dare I say, ecstatic to go back to school the next day. Ecstatic! To go to school! I had never seen him in such a positive mood before.”  
Toriel paused, thought a little, then proceeded.

  
“Maybe you have changed. I know for a fact he has, and it was surely for the better. That was, of course, before we got there that morning and found out about the incident. The aura went away. That happiness had faded from him, replaced by... something far more lonely. He even tried to get into the school yesterday morning, but I was lucky enough to catch him before he did. He's been asleep since yesterday evening. Since the day of the incident, he's been very dejected and quiet, even more so than usual. I rarely see him anymore unless I go into his room myself, but whenever I do he's either staring at his roof, or sleeping.”  
“That sounds terrible.”  
“I'm his mother, and he refuses to talk to me, or anyone else. Of course it's terrible.”  
  


Toriel looked up at Susie, with an expression of despair.

“So... when you came to my door, and you were talking to me, you made me realize something. Maybe you could help him. I know you've probably wanted to see him, and I'm sure he has wanted to see you. Maybe seeing you would strike some sense into him. I don't know. I've run out of options. I even got-”  
A grimace crosses her face.

“I even got his father to come visit. Not even a hug and flowers could do anything. It hurts, so very much to see my child in such a dark place. So, please, if you can, talk to him.”  
  
Susie felt her heart sink a little. She thought he might have been a little lonely, but to think it would get this bad... If she had any idea how serious the situation was, she would have made coming here a way higher priority.  
  
“I'll try my best.”  
The goat's worries, if only by a little, seem to drift away.  
“Thank you. Just head to the left then take the stairs on the right. His room is the first on the left.”

  
Susie nods, stands up, and follows her directions. Though it was probably only a middle class house at best, she still felt as if the place was miraculously looked after. Susie guessed that's how mothers have to be. She wouldn't know. Though, she knew how Toriel was before meeting her properly. She didn't expect anything less out of her. Trying her best not to stomp too loudly, she walks into the dimly lit hallway of the upstairs portion of the house, then turns to the first door on the left, as instructed. Without further ado, she opened the door, letting what little light there was into the room. And there, laying in a bed at the rightmost side of the room, was Kris, wrapped up in a blanket. Shaking awake, he rolled over to look at whoever had disturbed his sleep. Susie heard a quiet gasp emerge from his mouth, while Susie felt her own mouth bend into the first legitimate, unforced smile she's made in a long time.

“Hey, dude. Nice to see you again.”

Kris sat up in his bed, hopped off, and shakily fell to his knees. It was as if his legs weren't strong enough to support him. Susie quickly came to his side, offering a hand to help him up. He took the offer, but instead of simply rising to his feet, he hugged her. With his body close to hers, she could feel every individual shiver he had. His shaking was severe, it more suited someone who was in forty below weather rather than in a warm, cozy bedroom. Getting used to the whole “getting hugged” thing, she returned his hug with one of her own. It was nice, but she was actually kind of concerned about the amount he was shaking.  
  
“Alright, let's get you back onto the bed, feels like you're in no condition to be walking right now.”  
Unsurprisingly, Kris obeyed without a word. Susie secretly wished he would talk more, because sometimes, with how he hides his face and emotions in general, it was hard to tell what exactly he was thinking. Maybe she didn't need to know. Maybe she didn't want to, either. Susie lifted Kris in her arms and placed him gently back onto the bed. He was still shaking pretty badly, though, so in an effort to try to calm him down, he sat down on the bed beside him.  
  
“Aw, come on buddy, it's just me. No need to get all shaky.”

“...”  
“...Really, though. What's wrong?”

No response, but it was clear that even if he was the talkative type in the first place, he didn't want to let on too much. That was fine with her, though. Just getting to sit there next to him was something she definitely didn't want to take for granted.

“Alright. It's fine if you don't wanna talk about that, but there is something I need to talk to you about.”  
Kris turned towards her, paying a little bit more attention.  
“I need you to start being yourself again. Your mom misses you, Kris. I had a talk with her, and from what I heard, you're like, a completely different person now. She cares a lot about you, Kris, even if she seems overbearing. I-”

  
Her words caught in her throat.  
“I know how it feels. To be disconnected with everything and everyone, and just feel like you don't belong sometimes. Even with family. I used to be a lot like you, but... that's behind me now. The fact is, Kris, people out there care about you. Your mom and dad love you, dude. Whenever I saw your mom she was always talking about her quiet, polite little boy. I can't say for sure what's caused you to act like this lately, but it needs to stop. If you just run away from it all and seal yourself away, you'll only hurt everyone more.”  
  
Kris felt Susie's hand touch his shoulder.  
“So, please. Shake yourself out of this feeling, and come out to see your mom.”

Kris didn't respond for quite a long time, staying unmoving in his bed. Then, he nodded his head slowly, and spoke for the first time she's heard in a long time.  
“Thanks.”  
“Don't sweat it. C'mon, let's go.”

Susie got up, as did Kris. Seeing her friend's legs still shaking as he stood, Susie picked him up by his shirt and put him on her back. The size difference made it easy for her to carry him, and when he wrapped his arms around her neck to hold on, she barely noticed. She walked out of the room with Kris on her back, feeling just a little accomplished, but much more happy for her friend. She knew she'd be able to get that little twerp back on track.

  
The moment Susie reached the bottom of the stairs, Toriel got up from her seat and turned towards Susie with a look of shock. She let Kris off of her back gently, putting him on the ground in front of her.  
“Kris. I think you have something to say to her.”  
And he did. But what he had to say couldn't be said with words. Instead, with tears dropping onto the floor and open arms. Toriel gladly accepted the gesture, kneeling onto the ground and giving him a tight, sincere hug. Now it was Toriel that was shaking. Susie sort of just stood there, admiring seeing the two take part in such a potent expression of emotion. It took a while, but Toriel had the strength to pull away from her son.  
  


“K-Kris... Why don't you go up to your room and get your coat. Let's go to the diner and have some nice hot chocolate, okay?”  
Kris nodded twice, then ran back up the stairs. Toriel got to her feet and wiped a tear from her face, then looked at Susie.  
“... I suppose I owe you an apology. And a thank you.”  
“Nah, don't worry about it Miss Dreemur. Seeing you too hug it out was enough for me. Besides, I was glad to help.”  
“Well, do come back if you want to talk more. I'm sure neither of us would mind having you over. I'm... sorry that I judged you so harshly.”  
Toriel patted Susie on the shoulder with a smile of approval.  
“I hope you become the best kid you can, Susie.”

It wasn't long before the three of them headed out the door, and into the cold winter air once more. After saying their goodbyes, Toriel and Kris were getting in the car while Susie was about to start walking away down the street. Toriel called out to her before she made it very far.  
“Excuse me! If you'd like, you can accompany us on our way to the diner, maybe stay and have some hot chocolate?”

“I'd love to, but I don't have any money for that.”  
“That's quite alright, I'd like to treat you to something anyway. Please come with us, I'm sure we'll have a good time.”  
Everything that kept her in her comfort zone was telling her to decline. She didn't listen, and accepted her offer.

What followed was a mostly silent car ride, followed by a nice, relaxing day at the diner. Susie's presence in the store at such a busy hour put a few of the monsters on edge, but after a while of seeing her in her new attitude, it was as if they didn't notice her at all. Susie was able to hold conversations surprisingly well, and cracking a few jokes that every so often made even Toriel laugh. Kris, Susie and Toriel all sat in a booth together, Toriel telling stories about her boys and Susie listening intently, while Hazel served them hot cocoa and coffee.

At one point, Toriel even bought Susie one of those hot chocolates that had the whipped cream on top. By the end of the day she had forgotten the name, but she remembered that it was the best cup of hot chocolate she's had, and the only one that she truly savored, drinking it slowly. As the day went on, Susie noticed she was smiling even when there was nothing in particular to be happy about. She just felt... nice. Everything but those red leather booths, the soft music, the sweet drinks and the friends that accompanied her seemed to slip away.

Susie was the happiest she had felt in a very long time.  
  
Hours passed like minutes, in the haze of conversation with everyone around her. Eventually, as the sun began to set, and as the patrons began to leave, only the three remained in the lobby, with Hazel still acting as their bartender until closing time. Once seven o-clock hit, the four of them walked out of the now darkened store. With winter being pretty much here, dark had come much earlier in the day than normal. Susie thanked Toriel for the day they shared together, and watched with Hazel as her and her son drove back to their house.  
  
Now, Susie stood on the sidewalk with Hazel, who gave Susie a light jab on the shoulder.  
“A real conversationalist back there, huh?”  
“What? Nahh, I was just being nice to 'em.”  
“Sure you were. I'll believe it when you wipe that goofy smile off your face.”  
Susie pointed to her mouth.  
“What, this thing? I think I'll keep it.”  
Hazel giggled a little.  
“Whatever you say. We should start heading back now, though.”  
“Yeah, getting a lil' cold out here. You lead the way.”

  
With a surprisingly nice day behind her, Susie followed the rabbit as they walked down the snowy streets of the small town they called home.

  
It was a quiet, clear night outside. The cold air didn't bother Susie much, but when she noticed Hazel was shaking a little, she decided to pick up the pace to the apartments. Weirdly enough, they didn't talk at all on the way to Hazel's place, either because they have been talking in passing pretty much all day, or they just didn't want to spoil the pleasantness of the silence shared between the two. Regardless of which the case was, it took them no time at all to reach the apartment buildings. She didn't see this part of town up close very often, since she had no one to visit around that area, and it kind of looked unsafe to begin with. Maybe she judged wrong. If someone as nice as Hazel lived here, maybe it wasn't too bad after all.

Hazel and Susie reached the front door of the building. Building three, the last one on the block, and the apartment closest to the treeline. Susie desperately tried not to look into it. She knew that there probably weren't going to be any eyes staring back at her, but she didn't like taking chances. Once inside the small porch area, Susie knocked the snow off of her shoes, remembering that eventually she needed to find boots. That is, if she didn't want soaked feet all the time. The porch was lit by a flickering, yellow light that looked like it hadn't had a proper replacement in years. In fact, the rest of the building looked to be lit in the same way. Must be an old place.

“Hope you don't mind a bit of stair climbing, my place is on the top floor, after all.”  
“No problem, I need the exercise anyway.”  
  


Calling the ascent up the stairwell “exercise” was a bit of an overstatement, since it was only five floors, and Susie was pretty fit to begin with. Reaching the fifth floor took no time at all, nor did reaching the end of the hallway to room 509. Hazel reached the door and took a key ring out of her pocket. It only had two keys on it, one for her diner, and one for her apartment. It checked out. Hazel slid the key into the doorknob, and hesitated for a bit.  
“Hey, uhm... Sorry if it's kind of a mess in here. It's been a while since I've had guests over.”  
“I'm sure it's fine. Trust me, if you saw my place, you'd have no room to judge.”  
Hazel slowly opened the door, it's wood self creaking loudly, as if to announce to everyone that someone was using it. She walked into the darkness a little, then reached to her right to turn the lights on. Susie followed behind her.

Hearing her apologies for the sorry state of her house, Susie was almost disappointed when she saw how nicely kept together it was. It was your typical apartment room, with the living room and kitchen being in the same room, while the bedrooms and bathroom were in a hallway off to the right side. Directly parallel to the front door, on the wall, was a glass door leading out to a metal balcony. Outside, the moon's light was shining directly into room. She could see the treeline, too, and even further beyond that was the lake at the far east side of town, the moon's grace shimmering lightly across it's surface. She used to walk the path to the lakeside and watch the moon high in the sky. Back then, she found comfort in the moon.

Hopefully, this night, it would leave her alone.

“Nice view, huh?” Hazel remarked.  
“Yeah, it's really nice. It's good you got the room with the trees for a view instead of the town.”  
“Hey, I heard the town at night from up above looks really pretty.”  
“Maybe.”  
  
In the middle of the living room, and in front of the window, was a large, brown, three person couch, facing to the left at an old tube television. Didn't seem to be plugged in. In front of where the couch was facing, a brown coffee table with a white mug and a newspaper. It was a pretty boring place in her opinion, and lacked any decoration. But she supposed that when you work as much as Hazel does, the time to decorate doesn't come often. Hazel closed the door and locked it, then yawned, heading towards the bedrooms.  
“Well, I'd love to chat, but I'm really tired after today.”  
“You're heading to bed already?”  
“Yeah. Early sleep means early rise, y'know.”

She didn't know.

“Now let me grab you a pillow and blanket real quick.”  
“I'm good. I got my clothes.”  
“You sure?”  
“Yeah, really, don't worry about it.”  
“Alright. I guess I'm off to bed then. Night, Susie!”  
“Night.”  
  
And there she was, alone once again. Not to the same extent as before of course, there were people all over the place. Even limiting herself to this apartment, Hazel was just a few steps away. Maybe being around others was just something she had to get used to. Susie sat down on the couch, and out of curiosity, looked into the mug on the coffee table. Empty. She wasn't sure what she was expecting. Newspapers never interested her all that much either. Too depressing, she thought. She sat on the couch, waiting for something to do to cross her mind. When this didn't happen for quite a while, she decided that now was as good of a time as any to head to sleep.

It was a pain that she had to walk all the way to the light switch and turn it off just to walk all the way back again, but soon enough she was laying on the couch comfortably, her feet pointed towards the balcony. It was big enough for her to sleep on without being cramped, that was good at least. The only thing that caused her displeasure was the moon basking her in it's light once again. She hated that she couldn't escape it. The She couldn't even move the couch without the possibility of waking up everyone in the building. She'd just have to deal with the moon watching her tonight.

She felt a little guilty. She felt like she was taking advantage of the people around her. Sure, Hazel offered, but it felt like that was only out of pity. Then, she felt guilty about not fully accepting her kindness. She hadn't felt this kind of complicated emotion before. Maybe she was being too self absorbed. Maybe she wasn't. It wasn't long before this thinking was making her mind exhausted. She just wanted to sleep now, put all this to rest until tomorrow.

Susie felt her eyes closing on their own volition, and she gladly gave in to their suggestions. The light from the moon faded a little as her eyelids tried their best to keep it out. She was finally able to relax for a while, as the moonlight completely faded, now, leaving her in complete darkness. She had only assumed her eyes just naturally filtered out the light to help her sleep.

That was until the faint moonlight basked her once again. She wondered what happened until she heard the soft wind of outside. Until she heard the sliding door to the balcony open.

Until she heard the breathing.

She felt a lot less alone now, but not in a comforting way like before. She felt something hostile. She felt sick. Susie then felt a lot more worried, because if they weren't here for her, they were here for Hazel. And she wasn't about to let her get in danger. She had to think of a plan. How she could challenge whatever it was that was inside. Susie found herself in the exact same situation as the second nightmare, when she also heard breathing and had no idea what the cause of it was. She had to make a decision to either act stealthily or attempt to surprise it with an attack.

When she felt the cold, wet, and scaly clasp of a large hand grasp her ankle, she knew the decision was made for her. Susie resisted the urge to scream for help, and opened her eyes quickly, trying to get a good look at what had grabbed her. It's body was facing away from the moon, so she couldn't make out any details, but it was at least a foot taller than her, and had incredibly thin limbs. It's head was small in comparison to the rest of it's body, which seemed almost bursting with muscles despite it's slim appearance. It was wearing a blue shirt that barely fit it, and was ripped to shreds completely down the middle, exposing it's chest. What it was didn't matter right now. What mattered was what it was capable of, and what it would do. Susie kicked and tried to crawl backwards, only to be met with an astounding amount of resistance. It showed no signs of struggling against her at all.

It began to walk back towards the balcony, all of Susie's struggling having no effect on the monstrous being. Getting desperate, she tried to bite at it's arm, piercing the scales and into the soft flesh and muscle. No response. It dragged her out onto the balcony, and she felt it's body tighten up, as if it were preparing for something. She had desperately hoped it wouldn't do what she thought it was going to, but when it began to lift her up, she knew her hopes had been shattered.

Without using much force at all, the monster hurled Susie over the edge of the balcony, sending her body spinning like a top as the wind lashed at her body, her visions of it in the moonlight only being able to make out blurs of dark yellow, black and blue. It had sent her flying incredibly far for how little effort it seemed to put into the throw, if the wind hitting her body was any indication. She knew exactly what would come next. She felt a gash rip open her back as she sailed across the top of a tree, soon after recoiling off of a few others as intense pain filled her body in almost every area. She felt blood flow from her nose as she fell through the branches, surely breaking a bone or two in a few places. Pain singed her body in every area, so it was impossible to single out which bones could have been broken.

Then to the hard, snow covered forest floor she fell, hitting the back of her skull off of the root of a tree, making her skull ring with nausea and agony. Agony. The perfect word to describe how she felt. Susie felt every individual cut bleed, every gash stung like she'd never felt before. She was facing up towards the sky, the moon staring her back down. Any part of her vision that didn't black out showed the branches above torn up and broken. She couldn't move. It hurt too much. It hurt so much that she couldn't stop the tears from coming out of her eyes. She didn't even know if she could walk. She felt darkness swallow her mind whole as well as her vision, the pain putting her into an incapacitated state.

Everything cut to black, as the last thoughts and feelings faded until the last thought in her mind fizzled out.

  
All she tasted was her own blood. It's all she could smell. It filled her mind as it flowed out of her body. She felt herself getting weaker by the second, but the fact that she could feel anything at all was something to be thankful for. It would seem Susie only blacked out for a moment or two, because the moon was still hung high in the sky. She didn't know if she could move. She hadn't tried yet, but it seemed she would need to soon. Far away, she could hear the sound of a heavy being hitting the forest floor. Then, the footsteps of some hulking, heavily breathing creature. Although the forest wasn't as thick in town as it was outside of it, visibility was still an issue. She had also lost any sense of direction, and the only place she knew she had to go was away from her attacker.

Susie was no match for it. If it had the strength to throw her this far with that little amount of effort, who knows what else it was capable of. She attempted to roll over onto her front to hopefully get in a better position to get on her feet, and immediately felt searing pain shoot up her spine. She was probably supposed to be dead, and if not for the lucky fact that she was a dragon monster, she probably would've been. Even with her race in mind, though, taking a beating in the dark world was a lot less of an issue than here. Here, the threshold for pain was a lot lower.

Susie knew that this was going to hurt. However, as the stomping and breathing got ever closer, she came to the conclusion that whatever pain came from herself would be a hell of a lot better than what that monster was capable of. Although her body was demanding a lot more than she could probably muster, she rolled over onto her chest, and began to lift herself to her feet. Her arms were surprisingly intact, it was just her legs that were the problem. She felt as if the slightest amount of weight on them would break every bone below her waist. Still, the adrenaline pumping through her gave her a significant amount of strength, and she was able to get to her feet, using the tree as a support.

She felt the urge to cough. Then that urge to cough turned into an urge to throw up. She knew she didn't have the time nor the energy to do so, though. She had to go, and she had to go quickly. Looking behind her, through the branches of trees and the snow that laid on these branches, she saw it. The tall, scarily strong, slim monster that had caused her so much pain already. She didn't care about what it looked like right now, she only tried her best to run. Through the forest Susie ran, trying to use the trees she passed for additional support. She was sure whatever blood was pumping through her wasn't the only reason her body kept moving. Maybe adrenaline, maybe pure determination. Didn't matter. Just had to keep going.

Susie thought about hiding as an option, but if the gash in her back wasn't enough of a reminder, the blood trail in the snow behind her was. She was easily traceable, especially if whatever was chasing her had the ability to find her in an out of the way place like Hazel's. She couldn't even hope to lose it. She was running without anywhere to run to. She had no goals. It was hopeless. The best she could hope to do is lure it away from town, that way if it did catch her, it'd be far away from anyone else.  
  
That was a sound plan until she realized that the footsteps weren't getting any further away. It was faster than her. Of course it was. Too fast. She had no chance. She looked behind her and almost screamed when she saw it not even a foot away from her. Turning around seemed to be her downfall, because if she hadnt've done so, maybe she would've seen the root that she tripped on. Intense pain shot through her entire body as she felt to the cold ground once again. She tried to get back up, but the pain was too much. And unfortunately for her, the creature was standing right behind her. She felt the drop of a warm liquid on her back as she felt a scaly hand clench lightly around her neck, and bring her upward. Then, turning her to face it, it slammed Susie's body against a tree, adding even more pain to her body as the wood behind her cracked loudly.

After her eyes opened after cringing from the agony she's been put through, she looked it right in the face. At least, what part of it's face remained. She recognized it's head. She recognized the black liquid seeping out of it's now jagged tooth filled maw. She understood now.  
“...A-Alphys...” Susie choked out.  
Her head started to jerk from side to side slowly and erratically. She raised a hand behind her head, readying to strike directly at her face. Susie began to panic, grasping the arm holding her to the tree in an attempt to loosen it's grip.

“Alphys, no, please!”

Alphys, or whatever it was that controlled her body, paid her cries no mind, although her grip on Susie did loosen ever so slightly. This was enough for Susie to push her hand off of her neck, falling to the trunk of the tree while the area of the tree where her face once was got brutally slashed, Alphys only taking a single swipe at it. This was enough to cut right through the tree, tipping it backwards as it fell against another tree, now diagonal as the sound of splitting wood echoed through the forest. Susie knew she had nowhere to run, so she simply got to her feet again and backed away slowly. Alphys paid no attention to the destruction she caused, instead following Susie at a pace similar to hers.

“Alphys... please, I-I'm sorry I ran away from you. I was so scared and I-I wasn't prepared to see you like that and-”  
Alphys made a few pained whimpers, then screamed in a pained, sorrowful wail as she held what remained of her head, clawing at it feverishly as more and more black liquid seeped from it. The sound of flesh and scales being torn and ripped apart tore at Susie's soul as Alphys tore herself apart.

“Alphys, stop! Please, you're hurting yourself!”  
She looked towards Susie, the tar-like liquid seeping from her mouth as she whimpered. Then, she said the only competent sentence Susie had heard from her in this state.  
  


“N-No one w-will ever hurt me as much as you d-did.”

  
Susie felt her throat close up. This time, the tears coming from her eyes were more than just physical pain.  
“I know, I-”  
“Y-You feel it n-now too... scars, hurt, blood, but... alone h-hurts m-more...”  
Her speech was getting less and less competent. Susie could even feel the sanity slipping from her.

“S-Susie...loved y-you...l-left me...”  
“I know... I know, Alphys. I was a coward. You had shown me some of the most kindness and understanding I had ever felt... b-but I was a god damn coward. I ran away, and I-I'm sorry...”  
Alphys stopped tearing at her head, and fell onto all fours, shaking as she crawled towards Susie and knocked her to the ground, hitting her back on a large tree trunk as Susie leaned up against it. Alphys quickly got closer as she drooled black mold onto her.  
“I'm sorry Alphys, but... I-I know it's not enough, but... I'm here now. I'm here, and I'm never going to leave you again. I promise.”

Susie placed a hand on what remained of Alphys' cheek. Her whimpering only got louder. She couldn't help but think of her mental deterioration as her fault. Maybe if she didn't run away from her, she would have never gotten this bad. All she had to do was stay with her.  
Maybe it isn't too late... maybe she could make things right.  
  
Alphys' movements got less erratic, her whimpering getting less pronounced until her breathing was only a faint sound in the forest's silence. She felt her getting more relaxed, almost as if she was falling asleep. And Susie didn't know if it was the loss of blood or exhaustion, but she felt he consciousness slipping too. Maybe she could help her. Maybe there was some way to reverse what had been done to her body. Maybe there was a way to get everything back to normal.  
  
As she thought about this, she looked to the sky once more and saw the moon hanging there as it always has, beaming it's soft light down on Susie and Alphys. In fact, the light seemed much brighter than normal. She felt oddly calmed by it's light, which was a feeling she hadn't felt from it in a long time. It was only when she heard the whistling of wind from something falling from above that she felt the comfort slip away. Then, the familiar sound of tearing flesh.

She felt Alphys shudder as Susie looked behind her head, to her back. Glowing in the bright moonlight, and seemingly emanating light itself, was an incredibly long, glowing blue lance, pierced directly through Alphys' back. The area around the wound it had made boiled with black, liquid as it seeped out of her. Alphys suddenly reeled back, and begun to scream once again as she desperately tried to pull the lance out from her body, and in her failings to do so, got even more beast like in movement. The screams that echoed through the night were deafening as Alphys swiped and flailed her arms around with no clear target in her mind. Eventually, she fell to the ground, black blood pooling around her body and melting the snow away. Susie looked around for the culprit that could have done this and found nothing but the moon staring her down.  
  
She was in shock. One of her only friends was writhing on the ground, impaled by a mysterious force. Alphys was whimpering loudly now, which snapped Susie out of her trance. She stumbled on her near broken legs to her friend, grasping at the gigantic spear buried in her flesh, but recoiling away once she found that the spear was extremely hot to the touch. Susie didn't care, and tried to grasp at it again, only to be recoiled by a flash of light and a burst of air, knocking her to the ground once again. When she looked back up, she saw a familiar tall, white glowing figure standing above her friend.

“Y...You get away from her!” Susie demanded in a raspy voice, crawling toward the figure. It, of course, paid no mind to her, and instead picked Alphys up by the head, it's hand fully enveloping her skull. Susie knew exactly what came next. Alphys was screaming in it's grasp like a trapped rat, her body flailing around unpredictably as she whimpered and cried for help, it's pleas getting not a single response. Susie began to feel tears join the blood streaming down her face.  
“Y-You bastard, d-don't you dare hurt her! I'll kill you, you son of a-”

She didn't finish. It was too late.  
  
Deep black blood seeped from the being's hand as her head's insides blossomed into an explosion of dark flesh and yellow scales that sparkled in the moonlight as they careened to the ground. The whimpering had stopped, as did any movement that came from Alphys' corpse. Susie fell to her knees as the decapitated, lifeless corpse fell limp to the ground, making nothing but a small thud as it hit the soft snow below. The glowing spear that had helped end her life had disappeared, leaving only the being and Susie left. Susie began to sob, looking up at Alphys' murderer. She wanted to scream at it, to ask why it had done what it did, to what end it was doing all of these terrible things, why she deserved what it did to her.  
  
But she could only cry.

  
With a flash of light, it was gone as soon as it arrived. Susie whimpered, crawling her way to her friend's now soulless husk. Snow fell from the sky, but she hardly noticed. Susie fell upon her body, the patient's gown she was wearing only serving as a testament to the terrible death her life had handed her. To how much she deserved better. All she could do was cry over her. She didn't care if she died here. She needed to be here. She didn't do enough.

She missed the time where things like this stayed in her nightmares. Now her life had become one.

  
Time, to Susie, didn't matter. She was sure it had been a long time, since it seems her eyes couldn't produce any more tears to shed. Her clothes and body were tainted with both her and Alphys' blood, and she knew that if she didn't get help soon it could possibly be the end of her. Susie stood up and felt a rush of blood go to her head, making her feel disoriented. Her head felt fuzzy, and all she could smell or taste was the coppery flavor of blood. She didn't want to leave her here, but what else would she do? Trying to carry her would probably kill what energy she had left. She promised in her head that she would be back for her. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, but she promised that she would be back, and she hoped somehow, somewhere, Alphys knew the promise was genuine.

The snow crunched under Susie's feet softly as she walked in the direction she thought would bring her to the path into town. It instead brought her to the edge of the lake, where she could see the moon high in the sky. Somehow, she knew it was listening. She knew that bastard was up there. Where she couldn't reach it. If she had an ax big enough she would kill it. She was sick of everything. She wanted a normal life, and for a while, it almost seemed like that was what she was going to get. But no, of course not. Everything had to go wrong. Why wouldn't it? This was her life after all. Why would she be allowed to be happy?  
  
Susie fell to her knees, looking towards the pale blue sphere that was hovering parallel to the lake's shore. She felt one last tear fall from her eyes. She could only think of one thing to say, if it was listening.  
“Why?”  
The lake's water was surprisingly still, making it a near perfect reflection, as if the entire lake was one enormous mirror. She heard a noise coming from below the surface. A sort of high pitched whining tone, it's pitch shifting up and down slightly but always staying at a relatively high register. The sound got louder and louder, until she saw something under the surface of the water displace the surface. Then, it emerged from the center of the lake, levitating into the air as if it was being pulled up by string. A towering, red, humanoid body, it's finer details obscured by both the darkness and the marring of it's flesh and bone. It was at least twice Susie's height, she could tell as much even from the distance between them.

Then, came more. More and more bodies, making the same noise and having the same irregular body structure, levitated up from the depths of the lake. Dozens upon dozens of them rose up until she couldn't even hear herself think from the noise. She felt her body shaking against it's will, as if her very bones were trying to escape her body. She fell to the floor in a manic, shaking seizure, feeling her mind and body slip away from her soul's grasp. Her eyes blinked rapidly as a familiar but unwelcome entity forced thoughts and images into her head. Thoughts of blood, rust, and descent into darkness. Images of that vile smelling, dark hole she found underneath her house. Then, an unfamiliar thought. A foreign and alien image. A set of crimson metal doors emerging from the earth to the south.

Then, blaring warning sirens reaching across miles and miles.

This bombardment of imagery ended swiftly when her consciousness cut to black. She wasn't sure if she was dreaming anymore, but all she felt was the feeling of falling into a deep, unloving and uncaring darkness.

Then, light. Light, and the buzzing of an electric light. The buzzing, and the sound of a heart rate monitor. The sound, and the feeling of unfamiliar fluid being pumped into her veins. Susie knew exactly where she was. She opened and rubbed her eyes, trying to reduce the fuzzy, unfocused haze that was drawn over her eyes. Once the veil was lifted and her eyes focused, she looked around the room, finding not a single other soul in the room with her. Looking down at her own body, she found that her clothes were missing, replaced with a pale bluish-green patient's gown. Below that, she saw various stitches all over her legs and body. Then, the pain hit her like a truck. Everything hurt. Everything. From the minor pain on her arms to the unbearable pain across her back. She laid down and rolled over.

Susie saw the door open, and a bear monster dressed in a doctor's outfit walk in. He looked at Susie with a blank, unfeeling expression. Typical.

“Hello, miss. Do you remember your name?”  
“Susie, yeah.”  
“Mhmm, and do you know what day it is?”

“...Sunday?”  
“Sunday when?”  
“I dunno.” Susie replied rubbing her eyes.  
“Sunday, October the fifth, Susie. Now, how are you feeling?”

“Everything hurts.”  
“Uh huh. Do you know why?”  
“Yeah, I have cuts and bruises and gashes all over me, why else?”  
“That's... not what I meant. I mean, how did you get those injuries?”  
“I-”  
  
Susie held her breath. She couldn't tell him anything. She had to think of something, and quick.  
  
“I... was at Hazel's place. I was on the balcony, and I felt really light headed all of the sudden. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground, hurt really bad. I must've passed out after that.”  
The look the doctor gave her let her know that he didn't believe a word.  
“Really. Then why is it that your body was found next to the lake?”  
“...I don't know.”  
“Very interesting. Anyway, we're going to keep you here for a couple days, see how your condition progresses, then we're gonna send you to Amigdella for more advanced treatment.”  
“What the hell is Amigdella?”  
“You know, the city about a dozen miles west? Have you really never been there?”  
“Not that I can recall, no.”  
“Well, they're much more suited to deal with a situation like this than a small town clinic like ours.”  
“Hell, is it really that bad?”  
“We hope not. But it never hurts to be sure.”  
“Right. Thanks.”  
“No problem. Just rest easy.”  
The doctor was about to walk out the door, before Susie said one last thing.  
“Hey, there was another patient here. Alphys. How is she?”  
“...Odd that you ask. She actually went missing last night. We haven't found her yet.”  
“...Alright.”  
“Why? She a friend of yours?”  
“Yeah. I heard she was here but I wasn't allowed in.”  
“I'm sure we'll find her. Don't worry.”  
  


And with that, she was left alone once again, with nothing but the buzzing of the lights above to accompany her.

The next few days went by in a blurry haze of hospital lights and heart monitor beeps. They put Susie on, in her opinion, a bit too much pain killing medicine. Most of which, she couldn't even remember the names of. They were all those unpronounceable scientific names, the kind she never liked, and didn't understand anyone who did. She didn't think she could remember the names even if she made an effort to. She just let them give her whatever would take the pain away.

Sometimes she saw a tall white figure standing by her bed wearing a purple dress, and though it spoke to her, she was never able to respond. Doctors' voices came and went, some recognizable, some less so. A purple figure stood by her bed along with the white one, speaking indecipherably about the “outside world”. The purple one would often sob on Susie's body, apologizing for something. Maybe if she had known the mental pain these drugs would put her through, she could have bared with the physical pain.

Sometimes, though rarely, her vision and cognizance would return to her. Unfortunately, this seemed to always be at the hospital's most docile hours, where not a visitor nor doctor would come to visit her until the painkillers got reintroduced into her blood stream. Susie didn't have a watch, and there were no windows or clocks on the wall, so time as a concept began to slowly slip away from her the longer she stayed in the hospital. It could've been days, weeks, or months since she had been outside, and she had just forgotten about it. It was impossible to tell.  
  
Wasn't she supposed to be in a different town by now...?  
  
“Susie? Susie, I'm gonna need you to wake up.”  
The soft, dreamy feeling of sleep being stripped away incredibly fast, Susie sat up in her bed. Oddly enough, this didn't hurt at all. Whatever they were doing to her, it must have worked. There, standing about as uninterested as ever, was the bear monster she had come to know as her doctor. And that was about all she knew about him.  
“Hey. We're gonna keep you here for today, but tonight we're gonna send you home with Toriel, okay?”  
“Toriel? Why her?”  
“Well, the last person to have you as a guest in their home feels quite a bit responsible for what happened to you. She feels it was her fault. I tried to tell her otherwise, but some people are a bit stuck in their heads. Hard to get them out sometimes, it is. Besides, I think you should stay away from high places for a while anyway.”  
  


Hazel felt guilty? Why? It was completely out of her control. Maybe she thought she could've done something if she had known? Although, she doesn't know about any of the stuff with Alphys... maybe she thought if she had stayed up she could've stopped Susie from falling... shit, she would need to talk to her as soon as she got out of here.

“Anyway, your body is in a better shape than it was, though I wouldn't say it's fully healed quite yet. Take it easy, will ya?”  
“Yeah. Did I ever get sent off to that hospital in the city?”  
“No.”  
“... Care to explain why?”  
“We... haven't been able to contact anyone outside the area. No one here can get a signal, all the land lines are cut... even the internet has stopped working.”  
“The hell? Why?”  
“No one has a clue. And with the road closed-”  
“Why the hell is that road closed, anyway? It's been like that for weeks but I can't remember ever hearing why.”  
“... I don't know. I just... I don't know...”  
The doctor looked incredibly distant in the moment he said those words. Almost like the thought of it depressed him. This look on his face vanished as fast as it came, and he returned to the boring monotony of his regular demeanor.  
“See you in about six hours. We got your clothes washed and stitched up too while you were here, though you'll wanna get something else whenever you get the chance. You'll look a bit... homeless, is all I'm saying.”  
  


He calmly exited the room, closing the door gently behind him. Susie wondered if she knew about her housing situation, and if that last comment was just an incredibly unprofessional insult. She also wondered if she should stop taking everything so personally. She decided the correct answer was “yes”. The next few hours went by about as fast as six hours could. That is, painfully slowly. There wasn't much she could, or was allowed to do besides lay and stare at the ceiling. The air in here was stale, and smelt of dirty bandages. She hated this, she wanted to be anywhere but here, but here is where she would stay for a tortuous six hours.  
  
Though all things come to an end, and thus did Susie's time in the hospital. The doctor came in one last time, handing her the only clothes she bothered to ever wear, and telling her to leave whenever she wanted. Even she had to admit they did a nice job of patching her clothes up. Though she did like the look of the ripped jeans, it would feel nice to be fully protected from the cold. The white and blue shirt she was wearing had a huge row of stitches down the back of it now. Luckily, she had taken her coat off at Hazel's. It was probably still there, too. Another thing to do when she would eventually meet up with her.  
  
Once fully dressed, she walked outside the room to see Toriel in the waiting area. She stood up with a worried look on her face when she saw Susie, and walked over to greet her.  
“Susie... I'm glad you're alright.”  
“I'm fine, yeah. No need to look so worried.”  
“Well from what I heard it was a pretty serious injury! Not everyone falls from a five story building and lives!”  
“Not everyone is a tall dragon girl, either.”  
She says “tall” as if she isn't still a little shorter than Toriel. Susie mustered up as convincing of a smile as she could, and put her hand on Toriel's shoulder.  
“Seriously, miss Dreemur, I'm fine.”  
“Please, call me Toriel. I would think we're acquainted with each other well enough to be on a first name bases, considering I'm letting you stay in my home. I've also prepared some clothes for you to try on, once we get there.”  
“... Thanks mi-, err, Toriel. I really can't thank you enough.”  
“Oh, no worries dear. We all have rough spots in our life.”  
The receptionist called Toriel over.  
“Excuse me, Toriel Dreemur? If you'd come here, we'd like you to sign some things.”  
“Oh, of course. Susie, you can wait out by the car if you'd like.”  
“Sure thing.”  
  
Susie, turned away from Toriel, thinking about how nice of a person she is to let her stay with her. Susie slowly opened the door that lead outside, and stopped herself from gasping. There was nothing. Nothing but darkness. An endless void in all directions but the one from whence she came. A peering, empty plane of nothingness. Susie stood there in the doorway, wide eyed as she listened to any sound at all that could be coming from the void, and having nothing greet her ears but a deafening silence.

“Something wrong, Susie?”  
Susie could've snapped her neck from turning her head back any quicker. Toriel returned her glance with a concerned, motherly look. Susie turned back to look out the door, and saw the snowy, cold sidewalk and street she expected to see the first time. Susie took a deep breath.  
“Y-Yeah. Meet ya outside.”  
Was all she could stutter out before walking out of the hospital and shutting the door behind her.

“I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.”  
  
She repeated those words in her head on the way to the car, and she wished more than anything else that she could believe herself.

A cold wind blew against Susie's face as she waited for Toriel to exit the hospital. Being that it already nearly night time, with the sun just barely dipping below the horizon, it was quite cold. However, she attributed that to the lack of proper winter clothing she had on. Though right now, that was the least of the worries that plagued her mind. There was a lot of evidence that could prove her made up story false. She left a trail of blood, to be sure, and the broken branches that were far, far away from the balcony would be a red flag too. And that's even assuming they don't find her body... Susie was trying to keep it together. Trying her best to keep a straight face.

A straight face she knew she couldn't hold for long. She knew she had to let it out at some point. Maybe if she could just make it until she got to Toriel's place, she could find a room and quietly do whatever she needed to. But she couldn't let anyone see her like this. The people here depended on her, and she's shown enough weakness already. If something were to happen, and the town at large was attacked, it would need all the help it can. Especially if it was something as strong as... her.

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. St-  
  
“Apologies for the wait, Susie! Tiresome paperwork and all.”  
Finally, something to distract her. Toriel walked out of the hospital, and hastily hurried to the car, unlocking the car and climbing inside. Susie followed soon after, climbing into the passenger seat. It was just as cold in there as it was outside, so who knows how long Toriel had to wait for her.  
“Why did you have to do paperwork, anyway?”  
“Oh, just obligatory things like proving that you're with me, and that you left with me.”  
“Alright.”  
  


The engine of the car roared awake as the headlights lit up the space in front of the car. It had started snowing lightly at some point, but Susie wasn't paying enough attention to her surroundings at the time to notice. Along with the lights in and outside of the car, the radio came on, and from it played nothing but radio static and distortion. Toriel scoffed and turned it off, leaving nothing but the hum of the engine to fill their ears.  
“Nothing but static all day, and the weather is clear as ever. If the telephones worked, I would give them quite the stern talking to.”  
Susie found the thought of that kind of charming.  
“Who's 'them'?”

“Whoever runs the radio stations, of course! And if not them, who ever I need to. They need to know that people are not happy with their service.”  
“Of course.”

The car made a U-Turn and began to head north, towards Toriel's house.

“But, erm... Are you alright, Susie?”  
“Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. The doctors did great for, apparently, not being prepared for anything like this.”  
“Well, yes, of course, but... mentally, I mean. I'm sure if I went through what you did, I wouldn't be feeling great in the head, either. Are you okay?”  
“... Yeah. I'm fine, Toriel. I appreciate that you're concerned, but you really don't need to worry about me. I've been through a lot worse than this and came out better.”  
“If you're certain... Just do not forget to talk to me. I am here to be spoken to.”  
“I'll keep it in mind, thanks. You didn't bring Kris?”  
“He's sleeping right now. Thankfully, he's been sleeping at more... acceptable hours, so no need to worry about that.”  
“I hope we don't wake him up.”  
“No worries, he's an incredibly heavy sleeper. Though, he will be excited to see you in the morning. Luckily, the couch in the living room folds into a bed, so you won't have to sleep in a cramped place. Apologies for not having a guest room, however.”  
“Ah, don't sweat it. The couch bed will do, thanks.”

It only took a couple minutes to reach the house, but once they pulled into the driveway, Susie felt a wave of exhaustion hit her. She didn't know how badly her body needed rest until that moment, and now that she was fully aware, she felt like she had been awake for days.  
“Hey, Toriel, I'm gonna need to use that bed as soon as I get in there. I feel... really tired all of the sudden.”  
“No worries, I will get you set up as soon as I can.”  
The car's humming stopped as Toriel shut the car off, and the world fell silent for a moment before she gathered her things and exited the car. Susie, having no things of hers to gather, simply left the car. Didn't she leave her duffle bag here? Did she forget it when she left to go to the diner the other day? She didn't care too much, since nothing in there was too important, but if there had been something important inside, she would be pretty pissed. Susie needed to remember not to forget as much.

Once inside of the house, Susie took off her shoes and sat down on the chair parallel to the couch as Toriel began to unfold the couch.  
“Do you need any help?”  
“No thank you, Susie. You really should rest, just let me do this.”  
“Okay...”

“Would you like to change into your new clothes first?”  
“No thank you... I think as soon as I hit that bed I'm gonna be on a different planet.”  
Toriel laughed softly.  
“Suit yourself. There morning will come, and we will dress you up then.”  
It didn't take too long for the bed to be fully made, and even outfitted with a blanket and pillow. Susie took advantage of the situation nearly instantly, barely getting a “thank you” out of her mouth before she was asleep.

Susie wouldn't know it, but afterward, Toriel would tuck Susie in properly after she had fallen asleep, and with a quiet “you're welcome”, ascend up the stairs to her own bedroom.

“Stay away from the light.”

Susie's eyes shot open, and looked around frantically. She knew she heard it. That whisper. She looked around the living room feeling out of breath, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. She even checked underneath the bed, but no source of the voice was found. Did she just imagine it? She just laid back down in bed and sighed. There was a small amount of morning sunlight coming in the window, so she only assumed it was rather early in the morning. No one would probably be up yet, and whenever she woke up it would be hard to get back to sleep for her, so she just laid down in bed and stared at the ceiling. It was probably best for her to do so anyway, considering her injuries.

She wondered what the voice meant. The light? Did it mean the moon? The sun? Really, it was such a vague warning that she wasn't sure it was of any use at all. She wondered why whoever whispered it to her even bothered. Then again, that voice probably only originated from her head. Then again, it could just be a sign of her deteriorating mental state. Then again, she probably isn't that healthy after seeing one of the only people who seemed to understand how she felt get their head-

…

Susie was happy to be alone. She was happy no one was awake. She needed to do this for a long time. She would only hope wiping her tears away with her shirt wouldn't leave any evidence, but it was all she could do. Just this once, she let her tears flow freely. As much as she hated to do it, she had every right to let her feelings out. And so, she laid there, staring at the front door through tear obscured vision, hoping no one could or would see her. She kept quiet as best she could, until eventually the tears faded away, with only a sniffle every once and a while a sign that she had cried at all. Susie was hoping she wouldn't have to do that again any time soon.

She hated crying, and she hated that she needed to do it. She hadn't ever felt an overwhelming urge to, but sometimes, after school, she would head to that broken down old house in the woods, and lay in her nearly broken bed. Sometimes, she would spend days just laying there and feeling terrible. She wouldn't eat or drink, she would sleep for days, and she wouldn't move. She never understood why she did this. Perhaps it was the crushing loneliness that came around would catch up to her in a unique way. It's not like there was anything to be done about it, at the time. Where else would she go? Everyone back then that didn't hate her was terrified by her.  
  


Thinking about that was making her feel like crying again, so she instead decided to think about how much better things are for her now. How Toriel came around to liking her, how Hazel took a chance to become friends with her, how people seemed to be less hesitant to hating her. Even while she was in the diner, she guessed that people seeing her laugh and converse with Toriel made people a little less scared of her. She no doubt thought people had doubts about her, but maybe one day most people could like her.

Interrupting Susie's train of thought, she heard soft footsteps descend the staircase behind her. Rolling over to check who it was, she saw a familiar goat woman come into vision. Susie stat up as she smiled at her, before she yawned loudly.

“Good morning, Susie. How did you sleep?”

“Just fine, thanks. You?”

“Oh, it was wonderful.”  
“Yeah? Isn't it a bit early, though?”  
“I tend to wake up early, and sleep early as well. This way, I get as much as the day in as possible. It's only efficient!”  
“Heh, right...”  
“Would you like some breakfast, dear?”

She thought about declining, but then she remembered that it's been ages since she's eaten last. Then, her stomach growled. Toriel giggled, and replied without a word from Susie.  
“I'll make you and Kris up an Omelet.”  
“Thanks, Toriel.”  
“No worries.”  
  
The day went on as normal, with Toriel and Susie making idle chatter as the orange glow of morning crept into the house. Once the morning light made it's way into the house, Kris made his way down the stairs. Susie finally got out of the bed after this, and sat down at the kitchen table with Kris. The smell of eggs, cheese and vegetables cooking filled the morning air, and filled Susie's mind with hunger. It took far too long for Susie's taste, but she eventually got half an omelet served to her.

She was about to devour it in one bite, but then remembered that as much as her stomach would howl, she needed to take it slow. Both to not make her stomach upset, but to not look rude in front of Kris and his mother. Using the fork and knife provided to her, she happily ate up the meal, complimenting Toriel on the deliciousness of it whenever her mouth wasn't full. Kris, sitting beside her, didn't say a word. Though, she could sense the gratification nonetheless as he ate up the omelet half that was given to him. Actually, he was holding his own against Susie in terms of how fast he ate. Quite impressive, if a bit worrying.

Susie could've eaten four of those omelets, but she decided what she had was enough for now. Once her and Kris had finished eating, Toriel spoke.  
“Well, I hope that was a good meal for you.”  
“Yeah, it was amazing. Thanks a lot.”  
“You are welcome. Now, if you'd like, you can go into the bathroom and look under the sink. I've put some clothes there for you to try on. I'm not sure if they're your... type, but you can have as many as you want. Just make sure to leave your old ones somewhere where I can find them, so I can wash them. Oh, and if you'd like, you can shower as well.”  
Come to think of it... Susie wasn't sure when it was that she showered last.

“I might take you up on that offer. Thanks for everything, Mo-.”

Susie quickly put a hand up to her mouth. Toriel's eyes shrunk a little in shock, as Susie's did the same. She could even feel the glaring eyes of Kris burning through the hair that covered them.  
“I'm gonna go try those clothes on now thanks.” she sputtered out, quickly excusing herself from the table and into the bathroom. She thought Toriel said something, but she was too embarrassed to stay in that room any longer.

Susie swiftly made it into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her, putting her back to the door. What the hell was that? Did she really almost say that? Did she really almost say that in front of Kris? God, what does that tell Kris about her? What does that tell Toriel? What does she think? What was she thinking? Susie buried her face into her palms, clenching her eyes shut as she rubbed them. She really, really needed that shower. She really needed anything to distract her from what just happened. She needed one even before she got here, but now she really needed one. She felt incredibly unclean after that.

Maybe a clean body would help her clean her mind, too. Hoping this to be the case, Susie stripped and climbed into the shower, letting the hot, steaming water cleanse her sins.

  
These sins were incredibly persistent. Not even the hot water streaming down Susie's body could cleanse her of the memory that had burned into her mind. Though she was sure it would be burned into the back of her brain for about the remainder of her lifespan, she tried her best to take it out of her mind for a bit, and focus on other things. For instance, how amazing the shower was. She felt half a pound lighter as all the filth from who knows how long ago was washed away. Susie ruffled through her hair with her fingers, pulling the knots and such out while she shampooed her hair and rubbed her body with body wash. Feeling clean enough to last another lifetime, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry herself with.

The mirror had, obviously, fogged up while she was in there, so using the towel she had used to already dry herself, she folded it up and wiped the mirror clean. At least she could see out of it now. Wrapping the towel around the lower half of her body, she looked underneath the sink to find an absurd amount of clothing, some grouped into sets, and some that were simply folded, but unorganized. She looked to the left, seeing a pair of jet black pants and a shirt, with black socks on top. Susie decided she may as well go from left to right, as it seemed to only be natural. She took these dark clothes out of the sink, and began to try them on.

The first set she tried on was a very dark suit, with an undershirt of white and a tie of red. The pants were rather unremarkable, as were the socks. Susie felt restricted in these clothes, and they seemed a bit too... formal, for her tastes. She folded them back up, and placed them in their original place. Next was the shirt and pants to the right of the suit. There was a green shirt with a yellow stripe on it, along with a black pair of jeans. They were far too small for her, she could tell by just looking at them. Next to that, there was a plain, white shirt with black pants that looked a little big, but she tried them on anyway.  
  
The pants were made of a stretchy, soft fabric, while the shirt was made of cotton. Both fit perfectly, but underneath both of these was long, black coat. It was a bit thin, but it was sure to keep her warm when she needed it to. Out of all of them, this was the outfit she liked the most, and that fit the best. Besides, she kind of liked how mature looking it made her. As if she was a completely different person. Hell, maybe that fit her more than she thought. Looking at the rest of the clothes, she didn't find anything she liked. Everything else was either obnoxiously colorful or boring and bland. Maybe once she finds a place that sells clothes, she could find more to suit her. Though, clothes were the least of her worries at the moment. She still needed to visit Hazel, then after that...

Susie thought. She didn't have a job since no one could afford to hire her with the road closed, and she didn't have school due to obvious reasons. She couldn't go doing anything physically taxing, since she needed to rest and heal a bit first. Hazel would probably be at the diner, so... maybe she could just hang out there for a while. It's not like she had anywhere better to go, and she's sure Hazel wouldn't mind. As much as she felt like a free loader, she sure as hell wasn't going back to “her” house. It seemed that anywhere she went, she would feel like she was taking advantage of someone. But, as long as they're offering, and she doesn't make a mess or anything, it should be fine, right?

Susie stepped out of the bathroom feeling reborn. Fed, clean, and ready for whatever stood in her way. Toriel was still in the kitchen, and she looked genuinely impressed when she looked Susie's way. Kris must've gone back up to his room or something, because he was no longer at the table. Hopefully she wouldn't bring that thing that just happened up.  
“Well, well. You are looking quite spiffy, aren't you?”  
“Am I? I dunno, I like how this looks.”  
“You look nice. I'm glad you liked some of my clothes. Yours should be done drying, soon, too.”  
“Alright. Not sure where I'll put them, though.”  
“Is that not your duffle bag by the door?”

Susie looked closer to the door, and saw the bag.  
“It sure is. I was wondering where that went. Anyway, where's Kris?”  
“Upstairs, in his bedroom.”  
“Alright. I'll leave him alone for now. In fact, I think I might just head over to the diner.”  
“Would you like me to drive you there?”  
“No thanks, I'm fine with walking.”  
“Are you sure? Your injuries...”  
“I'll be fine. Trust me.”  
“If you're sure... Please do come back, though. And don't stay out too late, you never know what could happen at night! Especially these days...”  
“I'll try to be back before sundown.”  
“Alright... stay out of trouble, and have a good day.”  
“I will.”  
Susie made it to the door, and slipped her shoes on. She was about to walk out the door, until...

“Hold on, wait!”  
Toriel walked over to her with a long, purple scarf, and held it out to her. Susie looked at it with a confused expression, but smiled shortly after.  
“Aww, Toriel this is sweet, but-”  
Then, the scarf triggered something in her memory. Ralsei. It only hit her now how much she missed that little dork. She tried her best to not get choked up in front of Toriel. Susie took the scarf and wrapped it around her neck. It fit perfectly, and only a little bit trailed off the back. Toriel looked down at her, looking... proud, almost.  
“Thank you, Toriel. For everything.”  
“Of course, dear. Now, be safe!”  
  
Susie nodded, and walked out the door, into the cold winds once again. The snow that had started last night hadn't stopped, but it was quite the inconsequential amount of snow, so Susie barely worried. Besides, the light snow looked nice as it fell against the late morning sun, sparkling in the air as she walked to the diner. On the way there, though, she noticed something she swore was new. Far to the north, she saw a break in the treeline. It seemed to be a small, narrow path that lead far to the north, to what looked to be a small hill. She wasn't sure how she never noticed this path before, but something about it drew her into it.

...Maybe the diner could wait.

Susie sprinted towards the treeline, and once meeting it, went even further down the path. A few branches brushed against her coat, leaving little bits of snow and ice on her shoulders as she ran. She didn't know why exactly she was running, but the urge to walk was outweighed by the curiosity. Soon, the sunlight flickering in her eyes gave way as she came to a small clearing, it's centerpiece being a small hill. Walking around the hill, she found that it wasn't simply a hill at all, but the entrance to a bunker. Two red, steel doors blocked the entrance to whatever rested behind them.

She feels a familiarity from these doors, but can't pinpoint from where it originated from. Susie grabs a hold of one of the door's handles, and attempts to open it. The door, though giving some resistance at first, opens slowly as the metal hinges whine. Susie looks into the door and sees concrete stairs leading into a dark, abyssal blackness below. She would need a reliable light source to even think of coming in here. As much as her curiosity was killing her, she had to wait until she had a light source.

Closing the mysterious metal door, she headed back down the path from which she came.

First, the diner. Then, a light source. Maybe resting in that bunker were the answers to the questions she so dearly needed.

The sprInt back towards the diner didn't take too long, fortunately enough. It was still rather early in the day, couldnt've been past twelve yet, so she decided now is the best time to see her. The front door's bell dinged as Susie entered the diner. The few that attended the diner at this hour didn't bother to draw their attention to her, except for Hazel at the other side of the room behind the counter. Upon seeing Susie, donned a mixed expression of shock and happiness upon her face. Susie smiled, and walked over to her, Hazel closing the gap rather quickly with a tight, forceful hug. Susie hugged her back, about as equally as tight.

“You're okay!”  
“Of course I am.”  
“Oh gosh!”  
Hazel let go quickly, and stepped back, concern washed over her face.  
“Your back, I'm sorry, I forgo-”  
“Calm down, geez. My back's fine. You're fine.”  
The concern faded from her face, showing a slight relief as she smiled.

“So you're healed now?”  
“Well, doctor said to take it easy, but I've been feeling pretty good, lately.”  
“That's good... I was scared you wouldn't be able to walk, or something.”  
“Yeah, me too. I'm fine, but I heard you were really worried about me.”  
“Well, of course I was. Having something bad happen to a guest, let alone a friend is scary... I even heard that you're staying up at Toriel's now, instead of my place. When I saw you gone, and the window open, I thought the worst had happened... A-And I thought maybe if I had stayed up a little later, I could've-”  
“No, don't even think like that. There was nothing you could've done, trust me.”

Hazel looked incredibly unsure, but nodded anyway.  
“If you're sure... I believe you.”  
“Good. Now what the hell is going on with the outside world?”  
“I'm not sure, actually. If you've heard it from someone already, they've probably already told ya everything. No phone calls coming in or out, can't drive outta here 'cause of the block, no internet either. Real weird stuff is happening, lately it seems...”  
“Anyone found a reason why?”  
“Nope, no one's even left town.”  
“Hm. Maybe I'll fix that later tonight, but I got some errands to run. You sure you're alright though?”  
“Y-Yeah, I'm fine. Just glad you're okay, Susie. Come back sometime, yeah?”  
“You don't have to worry about that. I'll be back.”  
“See you later!”  
  
The doorbell rang once again as Susie exited the Diner. That hug was all she needed. Susie would have stayed a bit longer, but finding that mysterious set of doors in the forest really put her mind into overdrive. The mystery drove her forward. Though, the darkness inside it was quite the issue. She knew a crappy old lantern would probably be way worse than a flashlight, but she had no idea of where she could get one. She looked to her left, across the street, and an idea came to her head.

Though she had never seen anything but food come out of the grocery store, maybe, just maybe, they had flashlights there. The thought of going there without money was kind of silly to her, but then again, so was making money just to find out they didn't have what she wanted. She ran across the street, reaching the grocery store in no time at all. Judging from the sign on top of the building, it looked like this place used to belong to someone else, but their name was scribbled out. Now, only “sans” remained on the sign. Susie wasn't sure if it was always like that, but she decided she'd let herself in, anyway.

The building was your typical well lit small town grocery store, with food and other miscellaneous things lining the shelves and walls. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was a small, chubby looking skeleton monster in a blue jacket sitting at the till. Looked like he was asleep or something, since he didn't move an inch when Susie walked into the store. She walked over to him, Susie's footsteps echoing across the empty grocer.  
  
“Hey.”  
No response.  
“Hey, you awake?”

“Yeah, I was just hoping you'd go away if I pretended to be asleep.”  
“Well it didn't work.”  
“Nope.”  
The skeleton man lifted his head, two white eyes looking up at Susie.  
“Hey, kid. Shouldn't you be in school?”  
“... What? Didn't you hear about the accident?”  
“Kid. I haven't left this store in weeks.”  
“Why?”  
“Nowhere else to be. Plus, this chair is actually kind of comfy. And there's lots of ketchup here, too.”  
As if he had a point to prove, Sans took a bottle of ketchup out from behind the counter, and put the bottle to his mouth, squirting ketchup straight into him a couple times before hiding it under the counter again.  
“What the hell, man?”  
“Hey, don't knock it till you try it.”  
“Isn't that from the store stock? Won't you get fired?”  
“Not unless I fire myself. The last person who owned this place went on a 'business trip' out of town, and hasn't been back in weeks. She probably doesn't care, and apparently, neither did any of the employees, since they all quit. Now I own this place, cause no one else cares. Anyway, you're asking an awful lot of questions and buying an awful lot of nothing.”

“You got any flashlights?”  
Sans, with almost no thought involved in answering the question, digs in an obscured place behind the counter.  
“Catch.” Sans says, passing a small metal flashlight to Susie. It fit perfectly in her palm. Susie slipped it into her coat pocket.  
“You're not gonna charge me for this?”  
“No?”  
“Why not?”  
“The cash register's empty, so I can't give you change. It's been like that for weeks, cause no one has any money for some reason. There's money in the back in the safe, but it's dark in there. And you have my flashlight. It's also just a flashlight.”  
“... Okay, then. And this has batteries?”

“Fully charged.”  
“Thanks.”  
“No problem, kid. Don't burn anything down. Especially not this place. I'd hate to be anywhere else for weeks at a time.”  
  
Leaving his veiled plea in empty air, Susie walked out of the store, and into the chilled air of the outdoors. The realization was starting to set in that she was about to walk into a mysterious door she saw in a vision, knowing no idea what would be inside and armed with only a flashlight. This didn't seem safe at all, but it was either that or the hole that smelled of death back at her quite possibly haunted house. Susie decided that this was a relatively tame choice considering her options.

  
She debated on grabbing the duffle bag that held the ax from Toriel's, but decided against it. She didn't really want any suspicion to arise from her. For all intents and purposes, she needed this to be kept secret. People probably think she's crazy enough already. This in mind, she reluctantly headed southward, through the narrow treeline path, and back to the clearing. She had wondered if this clearing had existed before, but something had made the path just recently. Does that mean others could've discovered this place before?  
  
She supposed there was only one way to find out.  
  
The metallic wails echoed through the air once again as the door slid it's way open. The soft snow falling from the sky and onto Susie's shoulder would surely be missed, as would the sunlight falling upon her face. But sacrifices had to be made in the name of answers. And right now, Susie had a lot of questions. Seeing those concrete steps once again, but nothing more past the all consuming darkness, she took the flashlight out from her pocket and shined it down the stairs. With a click, the light revealed that the stairs went down even further than the light could reach. This made her feel a little sick to her stomach for some reason.

She tried her best not to let it bother her. She stepped into the strange bunker, unaware of whatever could be inside. She decided to leave the door behind her open, because if something wanted her out of there, she would rather not have a heavy metal door when she attempted to escape. She descended downwards more and more, for what felt like minutes. Minutes of nothing but walking into pure darkness began to take a toll on her. She began to feel anxious as the light of the sun behind her got further and further away, until it was but a speck of light in an endless sea of darkness.

It took far too long for her to reach the bottom, and when she did, she found that the stairs turned into a short cement hallway, with a large chain link gate that spanned the entire hallway at the end, and a single dark blue metal door on the right side of it, closed shut. Susie's footsteps echoed loudly as she walked to the door first, attempting to open it, and finding it locked. She expected this, but what she didn't expect was the door's knob to have no key. Looks like it had to be unlocked from the inside, only. She was about to walk away, but an odd noise brought her attention back to the door. She slowly and quietly walked back towards the door, and placed the right side of her head up close to it, trying to hear whatever was on the other side better.  
  
Susie heard... chewing. Chewing, and the occasional sound of something tearing. She backed away slowly. She no longer wanted anything to do with whatever was behind that door. Her imagination ran wild with possibilities, none of them anything she wanted any part of. She walked over to the gate at the end of the hallway, and when she looked past it, saw four incredibly thick metal cords that descended into a seemingly never ending darkness. An elevator. One that went even further down than she had already went. Susie looked around for a control panel of any sort, and when she looked to the elevator's left, she found what she was looking for. At least, in a sense. A large red button was on the wall that she had somehow missed before. Above it was a small sign, stenciled in black letters, was the button's purpose.  
  
“CALL LIFT”  
  
Susie, left with no other options, pressed the button. Then, her body was almost shaken out of her skin when a loud alarm came on, along with a red, blinking light above the lift's entrance. Then, the mechanical whirring of the lift's cables began, as the elevator began to rise. Susie calmed down after she realized what was happening, and took a deep breath. A deep breath that quickly turned to a sharp gasp as she heard the sound of a monstrous, high pitched cry come from the locked room. All the noise must be attracting it. She pressed the button again, but it didn't seem to stop anything. She heard wet, panicked footsteps get closer and closer to the door.

Then, the banging started, along with more wailing and screaming. She felt paralyzed. She had nowhere to run if it got out, and judging from the force and speed put into the slams against the door, she couldn't out run it. The screaming and slamming continued for a solid minute before the black, metal lift reached the top of the shaft, and the gates opened. Susie hurriedly sprinted into the lift, and found a small panel with an up arrow and a down arrow. She pressed the down arrow, and the gates closed, as more noise erupted from inside and outside the lift. It's screams only got more desperate sounding as she descended. The sounds eventually faded into the harsh metallic noises as the lift descended. The lift had lights on the ceiling, but they didn't seem to be working. Susie sat down at the back of the lift, her flashlight the only source of light she had as the steel outside the elevator moved upward as she moved in the opposite direction.  
  
She sighed, dreading what lied even deeper below this place, and wondering just what the hell she got herself into.

  
The blaring sound of an alarm shook Susie awake as the gates in front of her blurred vision opened, seeing behind it a short hallway, at the end of which was a giant pair of black metal doors. Apparently she dozed off at some point during the elevator ride, which either means she was very tired, or it was a very, very long way down. She had never been claustrophobic before, but right now she could imagine why someone would. She was currently countless miles below the surface of the earth, and the only way out that she'd seen was up a really long staircase guarded by a monster.  
  
She suddenly felt incredibly trapped. All that was left was to move forward. Susie rubbed her eyes, and focused her vision on the black doors ahead, picking up the flashlight and walking cautiously towards it. The doors were even more monstrously large up close, at least five times Susie's height. Strangely enough, she could hear the sound of wind on the other side. Numerous symbols were engraved into the door, not the least recognizable of which was the symbol that was on the door of the school, and in some other places around Hometown. The Delta Rune. Though, on this door, it was different. The symbol was upside down, with the orb and wings below the three triangles. This gave her an uneasy feeling, but with nowhere else to go, she pressed on.

Susie put both of her hands on either door, and with a great amount of effort, pushed them with the whole weight of her body behind her. They eventually gave way, with thunderous creaks to announce the door's slow opening. Dust shook off of the door and onto Susie's shoulders as between it, a bright, orange light nearly blinded her, as such a stark contrast to the darkness she was accustomed to was completely unexpected to her. With the doors open enough for her to traverse through, she wiped the dust from her black coat, and walked forward, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the new light.

  
In front of her was a surprisingly narrow walkway made somewhat naturally out of stone and soil, that stretched on only for a couple dozen meters before it dropped off. Sitting on the edge of what remained of the pathway was a smaller figure in dark tattered cloth, who, as if her presence mattered none to it, didn't respond to Susie at all. She walked forward, nearly to the edge of the cliff's face, and couldn't believe her eyes. The orange glow came from the sun half dipped over the horizon, it's light illuminating what seemed to be an entire kingdom, hundreds of miles below the cliff, which in reality, was just a narrow outcropping that belonged to a much larger mountain face behind her. An entire city of mangled orange machinery and magma rested just below her. Closer to the horizon was what used to be a forest, but was now a mess of dead trees and similar foliage caked in ash. Even further away, a ruin of pink and purple stone lie dormant. Beyond that, she saw nothing but empty fields of dirt, and the sun watching over it all.  
  
The thing that interested her the most, however, was the massive lake that rested between the machinery and the forest. A perfectly circular body of water that must have stretched miles across. The orange light of the sun made everything look as if it was burning, but the lake's surface reflected it perfectly as a small line of purple light danced and flickered across it. This made the lakes depth incredibly hard to gauge, but all she knew was that she couldn't see the bottom. A dark wind blew against Susie and the silent, clothed figure. One of which not knowing what to say, the other choosing not to say anything at all.  
  
Susie couldn't handle the silence anymore.  
“Wh... What is this place?”  
The figure replied to her in a quiet, raspy, but somewhat high pitched voice.

“This is where they drowned God.”  
Susie had no idea how to respond. So he did it for her.  
“It wasn't supposed to be like this. In an ideal life, we would've lived happily. But they came from above. They took his power, and placed him underneath the soft and crushing blankets of the water until the light was banished from his body. They took this light, and with it, began to experiment. This is the product of their last test, as am I.”  
He stood to his feet.  
“I sense it. You're from another test. Another timeline. They're attempting to find the ideal timeline for us, but their methods are flawed. An endless amount of suffering will come from this if they aren't stopped. The sun on this world is dying, and when it draws it's last breath, your world will be sent down a path of failure and misery. The fact that you're here at all means their project is failing and glitching. If you aren't lucky enough, you will become like me. Stuck in time to wander an empty world alone. Told that you would never be able to leave lest you turn to dust.”

The figure forces out a halfhearted laugh.

“But... Don't worry about me. Someone has to take care of this world.”

Susie stares at the dead, lifeless kingdom in front of her, and falls to her knees.  
  
“So... there's nothing I can do. Me, my friends... We're all just doomed to an endless cycle of suffering?”  
“No. That's... what I thought, too. But I was wrong.”  
The figure turns to her, the sun casting a black shadow over the cloak that obscured his head.

“They may be stronger than you could ever imagine, and this world may be too far beyond saving...”  
The figure walks towards Susie, and in a clothed hand, holds out a small black box.  
“... But with what little power you have, you can save your own world, instead. Inside this box is a power they forgot to take from him. When you find a mirror that can reflect the entirety of the sky, as well as the moon, plant this seed next to it and wait until the night. I'm... not quite sure what will happen next. But this must be a power we can use against them. I can feel it.”

Susie takes the box in her own hand and clenches it tightly, before putting it in her coat pocket. Susie felt her body shake as she felt the sorrow of hundreds of monsters in the wind.  
  
“Thank you... I-I don't even know your name.”  
Another halfhearted laugh.  
“... Nor do I. I forgot it long ago, along with most other things... except... I can still remember their faces.”  
His voice began to quiver, as Susie recognized it as a bit like a child's voice.  
“Their smiling, welcoming, loving faces. Calling a name I can't remember. Giving me hugs... saying they love me...”  
Without warning, he weakly stumbled toward Susie, and wrapped his frail little body around her. Susie hugged him back, her body shaking in quite the same way as his. She heard the sound of tears hitting the dry stone below them.  
“Wh-Why... Why d-did they let them leave, and then m-make me stay...? What have I d-done to deserve this?”  
  
Susie hugged him a little tighter. His form... it almost reminded him of... Ralsei.  
“You didn't do anything wrong... You were just... Dealt a terrible hand.”  
“Please, stranger... D-Don't let anyone, o-or god forbid yourself suffer like I have. Not even the worst of monster nor humankind deserve this.”  
“I won't. I promise.”  
The stranger in her arms held on tighter.

“Th-Thank you... It's best you leave now... There's nothing left for you here.”

“I'm sorry.”  
“Please, don't make this goodbye any more difficult than it needs to be. This kind of thing has happened far too much already.”  
  
Susie stepped back from the stranger. She had met him only minutes before, but she felt a closer attachment to him than she knew could exist. Susie wiped a tear from her eye, and waved at him as she left. The stranger simply turned his body towards the sun once more. Susie walked back into the mountain passage, closing the black doors behind her. She felt an intense sorrow as the doors closed, as Susie felt alone in her struggles once again. But she took what he said to heart. To not let the goodbye be any harder than it needed to. The flashlight now her only guidance left, she walked into the lift, and hit the up arrow.

Susie felt her anxiety rise as the elevator descended instead.

  
Susie panicked, walking over to the elevator control panel and tapping the up arrow frantically, only to have the sound of a cable snapping and squealing metal deny her request. The elevator was falling at a far faster speed now as the sides of the lift scraped off of the metal walls surrounding her. An alarm was sounding loudly as red lights from the ceiling blinked rapidly. She laid down on the floor of the lift, and hoped for the best, seeing no other options. Eventually the scraping stopped, and she felt her body get forced downward as it hit the ground. Or, more accurately, the water.  
  
She stood up and looked around with her flashlight, soon finding out that it was no longer needed. Susie found herself floating in a vast, seemingly endless sea of dark water that emitted a faint blue glow. She pushed the doors of the elevator open and looked above her, seeing the hole the elevator emerged from in a similarly large steel ceiling that hovered miles above her. Both the metal and the water must've stretched on for miles. Susie wonders how this sort of thing is physically possible... but remembers that maybe all is not what it seems in this world in the first place. Though she could see the water's surface glistening with strange, glowing flakes, the bottom of the water was obscured by a strange black fog that settled just below the water's surface.

  
It was dead silent besides the soft water noises around her. Not the comforting kind of silent, either.

Susie looked around the elevator for any signs of a way to get her out of this situation, but the only thing she could find was a small box on one of the walls, with a faded yellow caution sign on it. She stepped over to it, her footsteps probably being heard for miles as she opened the small compartment. Inside was a lever, an odd looking cylinder, and a page on the back of the compartment door. Susie looked at the page, and even though it's words were faded, she could make out the words.

“IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!  
If for any reason one of the cables snap, or the power cuts out, the lift can be switched into a high power emergency mode. This should, in theory, give the remaining cables (along with the entire system) enough power to lift you up. If the power went out, then you're probably stuck in the shaft somewhere, in which case you shouldn't worry too much. Simply climb to the top of the lift. There, you will find a fuse box with a cylinder similar to this one inside. Take it out, discard it, and put the one from this box inside that one. If a cable was cut or severed, but the red light above you isn't blinking, then you still shouldn't worry, and follow the steps above. If you see a red light blinking above you, stop reading this immediately, and follow the above steps. If you are in the Sea of Mistakes, you do NOT want to be there for any longer than you need to be. Why are you still reading? GO.

Signed, A”

Susie decided that with a name like that, the warning must have been there for a good reason. The sooner she got out of here, the better. She snatched the fuse in her hand, and walked over to the chain link door. Deciding it was probably the best place to climb, she grabbed a hold and began to traverse the door, making sure to not lose her grip and fall into whatever awaited her below. It was difficult, considering she had a rather large fuse in her hand, but she eventually made it. Crawling onto the roof of the lift, she looked around for the supposed fuse box, and found it in the middle of the four cables. Well, three now, since one had been cut. In a strange fashion, too, the cable was cut at the base, and it wasn't as if it was cut from normal deterioration. The cut was clean, like it was severed with a giant knife. She didn't want to think about the implications of this for much longer.  
  
The fuse box squealed open, revealing a leaking, busted fuse that had split down the middle from some powerful impact. The implications Susie was trying not to think of were getting far less easy to force out of her mind. She cautiously picked the fuse up, and not knowing what to do next, tossed it into the water, only realizing after that she probably just attracted more attention to herself. All the more reason to move faster, she thought. Placing the fuse in the box and closing it, she felt the lift whirr to life as the lights below her turned on. With not a moment to spare, she turned around and climbed back down one of the doors, and closed both of them behind her. With hope in her step, and a bit of happiness Through the gaps in the chain, she could see the silhouette of something incredibly tall in the distance. A humanoid figure that was at least as tall as a small skyscraper.

  
Susie took this as her queue to leave.

The force she used to press the up button was enough to make it sting for a bit. The elevator loudly announced it's ascent as the sound of shrieking metal reverberated across the sea, and began to rise high above the waters. Susie felt relief for a moment, and found that it was swiftly ripped away from her when she felt a dark gust of air blow across her body. It was a similar wind to the kind she felt on the cliff just minutes ago. Except it was coming from the silhouette in the distance, and seemed to be getting stronger as the elevator slightly swung in the breeze. Susie prayed that the elevator would make it to the shaft in time, but as she felt the cabin of the lift swing more and more, she felt her hope waste away from her body.

When she saw a small flash of light in the distance, she knew it was too late. Following the light, an unbelievably powerful gust of wind shook the entire lift, blasting Susie backward and hitting her back on the wall behind her. The wind knocked out of her, she gasped for air as she felt another cable from above snap, and the entire cabin tilt to it's side. Susie's body rolled to the bottom of the cabin, the machinery whining painfully as it tried to lift her with half of it's power gone. Hope had been lost to her completely. She shook in fear, waiting for the next flash, and when it came, she closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain to come.

  
The tearing of metal and whistling of wind reached Susie's ears as she no longer felt solid ground under her, her body being propelled backward incredibly fast. Pain tore through her entire body. What she could see became a blur as the steel ceiling and the blue sea became one. Nausea set in almost immediately as her stomach twisted in knots. She could barely breathe, and she felt the familiar taste of copper in her mouth. Then, after seconds of flying through the air, her body crashed against the water. She went light headed, her throat and lungs failing as water flowed into them, no longer being able to breathe. She witnessed in her blurry, distorted vision, the water around her turning dark red. She was bleeding heavily from where her left arm should be, and wondered why until she saw a floating, torn arm a couple meters above her. She would've screamed if she had air in her lungs to do so. But as she felt each individual part of her body shut down, she knew it didn't matter anymore. She was going to die down here. She was going to fail her mission to save the world.

This was her last thought before her consciousness left her, and all that remained was darkness.

Then, she saw a light. It was far away, but she could see it all the same, static and bright in the darkness. Susie couldn't feel any of her body, she only felt a strange, comforting warmness that surrounded her. She thought she heard a voice, but it could've been anything. Then, the light came to her. It's radiance getting closer and closer, until...  
  
Susie felt as if she was laying in a shallow pool of water. Her vision showing nothing but a dark red moon far above, and a white sky surrounding it. She used her arms to get to her knees, then eventually her feet. She looked around, only seeing a thin layer of water stretching to the horizon in every direction she looked until she turned around one last time and saw Hazel standing a few meters in front of her. Her head was missing, replaced by an unending, violent stream of dark fog that stretched far into the sky. The fog then became the sky, covering both it and the moon, until she was drenched in black so dark she couldn't see her own hands. She ran around the empty plains blindly, looking for someone or something to help her. She screamed for what felt like years, asking for anything or anybody to find her. Asking for forgiveness. Asking for love. Asking for feeling. But the running, frenzied footsteps of something she couldn't see eventually answered her calls.

Susie could hear the faint sound of a heart rate monitor flat-lining. Then, the sound of many frenzied, unsynchronized beeps. After a while, these beeps fell into place, and began to sound like a normal heart rate monitor. Then, she heard a strange, shy voice of a male. It sounded like it was being played through a speaker.  
  
“Oh... Y-You're alive... That's good, I guess... I was going to cremate you like all the others, but... maybe when you wake up we can...”  
  
The voice, along with the heart rate monitor, faded into the distance until the darkness absorbed her once again.


	2. ACT 2: SEA OF MISTAKES

Susie awoke to the sound of a conversation outside the room she was in. To her, it felt like she was laid on a small hospital bed. The room was pitch black, and her eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness yet. She wondered why or how she was alive. Hell, maybe she wasn't, because her entire body was completely numb.

“Come on, let me see her!” Susie faintly heard, muffled underneath the sounds of medical equipment and the heart monitor.  
“N-No... She needs to heal...”  
“So, let me watch her heal! Come on, It's been at least a couple days, let me in!”  
  


The sounds of a struggle between that shy male voice she heard earlier and a younger and arrogant sounding female voice was coming from behind a door to her right. She couldn't see anything, though, besides a few blinking lights in the room and the light from under the door. The struggle escalated, with the female voice getting progressively more frustrated until the door burst open. She could see the silhouette of a lizard or dragon monster standing in the doorway, behind that, an odd looking robot that used one wheel as it's primary mode of transportation stood idly in a well lit white hallway, fiddling with it's fingers nervously. It's body was a steel box fronted by a grid of blue lights and four dials on the bottom of it's front that didn't seem to serve much purpose. It had strange, tube like arms that ended in white gloves.

The dragon monster in front of the robot flicked on the room's light, temporarily blinding Susie before her eyes adjusted to the assault on her vision. Rubbing her eyes with her right hand, she looked over at the dragon monster... and thought she was dreaming. Before her stood a purple dragon girl that had to be at least four years younger than her, with short brown hair that had most of it pulled back in a ponytail, but only enough to leave some hair hanging by the side of her head. She wore a purple jacket, a white shirt with a blue stripe on it, and ripped jeans. Exactly the same wardrobe as she used to wear. It was like she was looking at a mirror image of herself that had been aged down a bit. Both Susie and the dragon girl looked incredibly confused.

“...Okay, this is weird. Who are you?”  
Susie cleared her throat.  
“My name's Susie.”  
The girl's look of confusion deepened still, before she smiled awkwardly and looked back at the robot.  
“Alright, Blooky, you got me. You told her my name and pulled some rediculous prank with the stranded girl. Very, very funny.”  
The robot, now known as “Blooky” defended himself.  
“I-I didn't tell her anything, this is the first time I've even heard her talk a-and I've been the one taking care of her.”  
“...You serious?”  
The girl turned back towards Susie, her smile now changing to a look of concern.  
“Are you serious?”  
“Yeah.”  
“My name is Susie too.”

  
This was going to get confusing incredibly quickly.  
  
“S-So uhm... Susie, this is, erm... Younger Susie, I guess...?”  
“Nice to meet you?” Susie said to her younger self.  
“Y-Yeah... I'm gonna go and... Do something. Else.”  
And with that, the little dragon girl hastily left the room, her small footsteps getting farther and farther into the distance. The robot let his hands fall to his side as he sighed in defeat, rolling into the room and closing the door behind him.  
“Sorry about that. You uh, want answers, but I kinda gotta ask you some questions first.”  
“...Okay.”

“How did you get here?”  
“I went down an elevator in a bunker just outside of town. The elevator failed, and fell down into this weird, huge underground sea. After fixing the elevator, I was on my way back up when a giant... thing used weird waves of force, and destroyed the elevator. I was sent flying and... my arm!”  
Susie went into a panic and sat up in her bed and snapping her gaze to the left side of her body, the heart rate monitor going much faster. She felt relief flood her body as she saw that, though wrapped in plenty of bloodied gauze and probably hurting like hell underneath the layers of painkillers she was most likely on, it was still attached.

“My arm... Is still here.”  
Susie laid back down, her heart rate returning  
“W-Well, yeah... I wouldn't recommend using it for a while, but it's still there. You thought your arm got cut off?”  
“I was underwater, and I saw an arm floating above me, along with feeling the left side of my body hurt. I thought...-”  
“Uhm, oh gosh you must be new here... Y-You vastly underestimate how many arms you can find in those waters. Among... Other things. Anyway, where are you from?”  
“There's a town above this place. Hometown. I've lived there all my life, but a while ago I started having weird nightmares, and crazy stuff started happening. After that, I saw a path in the forest that led to a bunker with two red doors. I went in there, and well... That's about it.”  
“Oh. Well, that's strange. Though, we've been down here for a long time, would be weird if stuff didn't change.”  
“How long have you been down here?”  
“A couple dozen years.”  
“...Excuse me?”  
“G-Give or take a few years. We, uhm, ran out of calendars a while ago.”  
“...Where are we?”  
The robot stayed silent for a while, but then turned it's front towards Susie.  
“Do you think you can walk? N-Never mind, I'll just help you. Sit up, please.”  
  


She begrudgingly obeyed her. While Susie's body was numb, she was confident she could at least get into a standing position. She crawled out of the blankets laid upon her, and found she was wearing nothing but a patient's gown. Once again. She sat up, and got off the bed, using Blook's metal arm to support her weight.  
“Oh, uhm, I had to change you into something a bit less...constricting, to operate on you better. S-Sorry. Your clothes should be with Susie somewhere. Y-Younger Susie, that is.”  
Susie didn't bother responding, and let Blook guide her out to the hallway.

  
The room opened to the middle of a bright white hallway, not unlike the kind you would see in a hospital. To her left, the hallway went on for a while before turning to the right. To her right, it was much the same, except it turned to the left at the end of that hallway. Blook noticed Susie observing the place, and hurried her along.  
“It would really be best if we got going... I'll be able to explain stuff a lot better when we get up to the roof.”  
At least the place had a roof at all. Directly parallel from the room she was in was a set of elevator doors resting on the other side of the hallway. With the quick push of a button, the elevator doors opened. She wasn't exactly too happy to be in another elevator so soon, but this one seemed a lot safer, at the very least. The inside of the elevator was strangely colored a dark purplish red, accented by gold ribbon-like designs that covered the walls. Strangely high class, Susie thought.

Blook pressed the topmost button on the elevator panel, of which there were only five buttons laid out vertically. From top to bottom, they were labeled R, Re, M, Ma, D. The elevator doors closed, as they began heading upward. A small screen above the doors read “M”, and slowly ascended up the list of letters until with a high pitched ding, the doors slid open. Susie felt a little bit more confident in her walking, and although it was a bit difficult, she let go of Blook and began to sort of limp out of the room. Blook almost tried to stop her, but held back and stayed silent. The roof's surface was rusted and aged from innumerable years of weather. Susie felt a familiar cold wind blow across her body, and looked off of the roof from a rusted railing on the edge of the building.

She seemed to still be in the same “Sea of Mistakes”, but in a completely different place. She stood atop a large five story building, held high above the water by four immense cylindrical support beams on all four corners of the main building. The outside of the building was weathered and rusted heavily from the winds and the water of the sea, most notably and most concerning on the supports, which were completely brown and red from the rust. Miles around in every direction were small islands that were made out of a gray, snow like substance that had weird looking bumps and sticks that emerged from their surfaces. There were a few buildings like the one Susie was standing on scattered around, but most either looked long abandoned or were half submerged in the water, empty shells of their former selves. Looking even further away, she saw silhouettes in the distance of gigantic skeletal, if not, rotting hands reaching into the pitch black, starless sky, the bodies they belonged to unseen to her.

By far, the most terrifying thing she saw was in front of her, far, far away from anything else in her vision, but it was large enough that she could see it from what must've been hundreds of miles away. Hanging by gigantic steel chains that ascended into the darkness of the sky and beyond her vision was an incredibly massive metal cube that had to have been innumerable miles across each side. She recognized it as what made up the steel ceiling back in the elevator. This means she must have floated quite the long distance to be able to be found here. It's a wonder she was alive at all. But this was the least of her worries. A revelation hit her like train that made her heart sink. Her entire life, all of her memories, and everything she ever knew and experienced was... fake. Stuck inside a cube floating in a sea of darkness.

For all she knew, she was just... made a couple weeks ago. Created with false memories and pushed into a world she had no genuine close attachment to. Susie needed to think about this. She had suspiciously few memories of being outside that small village she'd been in all her life. She can't actually remember much before that day she went into the storage closet with Kris. It was all a blurry mess of half memories and second guesses, but some part of her brain blocked it out of her mind until she left the cube. Was it all a lie? Was anything she did worth it? Were Kris and Toriel and Alphys and all the others even real? Surely if they were anything like Susie, they would be, right? Even if they don't realize it, they may as well be real, right?

Susie sat down and laid her back against the railing, it squealing a little. Blook looked towards her.

“Th-That's the test chamber. The cube. That's where the beings from the moon do their experiments. They've tried cloning old monsters from worlds ago and putting them in new worlds with a few new monsters and humans. T-Trying to make a paradise. But it never works. And everything that doesn't work... they send out here. Burned to ash. Sometimes they d-don't even go that far and just d-dispose of their waste intact. I-I found you a couple miles toward the cube from here, washed up on one of the last ash islands in the area in a pool of blood. You must have gotten out of there. I was happy you got out but... You were technically dead for... a couple days. Your heart s-stopped beating. I don't know what's keeping your heart going, but... it has to be something p-pretty determined. I'm sorry this happened, that you couldn't j-just live on happy in there. That the truth is so... terrible. But, look on the bright side, you're free now. Free from their influence and-”

“I need to get back in there.”

“... E-Excuse me?”  
“I need to save them. My friends are in there.”  
“B...But Susie, they're-”  
“What? Fake? I don't care. They're real to me. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm real too. I don't care if I was made yesterday and everything I've felt was made up, I still felt it. And that's what matters. The people in there? They feel pain just as real people would. They feel happiness and sadness and whatever the hell they want to feel. So I'm going to get back into there, and I'm going to get them out.”  
“... W-Well... We, um... We can let you stay here before you try that... A-And maybe help, but... It'll be tough.”  
“I know. But hell, if I can survive being blown across an ocean, I can survive whatever they can throw at me.”  
“I-If you say so... Uhm... Anything else you wanna know?”  
Susie thought about it. She should probably get to know as much as she could so she knew how to tackle this. If she wanted to save everyone, she needed all the info she could.  
  
“Alright.”  
Blook perked up. Susie looked at him with a look of insurmountable determination in her yellow eyes.  
“Tell me everything.”  
  


From Napstablook's perspective, it went like this.

  
It was dark when the screams erupted through the air. Though Waterfall was almost as remote as you could get, every single monster in the underground heard it in their ears and in their hearts. The screams of one body but many souls, coming from the dark, water filled region. No one was there to see what caused the screams, nor what caused the pain that the screams owed their wails to. Not even what caused the flash of light that lit up Waterfall like no other light could, and shot into the air, piercing the rock above and destroying the barrier. The ceiling and walls that kept the underground trapped evaporated as the setting sun's light blinded the residents, who knew about it's grace only from fairy tales. And even then, the screams continued.

Waterfall suddenly started to get pulled into the very water it was named after. From the middle of the region, the land slowly began to sink into an unending dark sea. Monsters that frequented the area, depending on which side of Waterfall they were on, fled either to Hotland or Snowdin as their homes were swallowed by the howling waters. The sky suddenly turned black for a minute straight, before turning into gray and black static that resembled what you would see on a television without a signal. At that moment, the screams were coming from more than just Waterfall. Panic struck across the entire underground as monsters from every area screamed in confusion and fear. Their wish of the barrier breaking given to them, but they were not expecting this to be the cause. Nor did they expect what came the next day.

Hundreds of monsters fell to the ground, face down and paralyzed. More screaming reverberated through the air as they were taken into the sky, floating high above the ground. The screaming was unbearably loud until in an instant, a flash of light blinded the world once again. The bodies were gone, and hundreds, if not thousands of floating, white hearts hovered in the sky, without a single owner to their name. Gray ash fell from the sky and blanketed everything below. The only ones who weren't dying, or already dead, were in the core. Only about 50 monsters survived in full, Napstablook being one of them due to his status as a ghost. The remaining monsters left the core in search for a way out through the barrier, the only exit being behind the king's throne. They made it to the door at the end of the barrier's hallway, and upon opening the black, rune ridden door, they found an elevator. One that supposedly led to the surface, and to an area unexplored far below the earth. The group split up, one group being sent up to the surface, and one sent further down. Napstablook was sent down, with a few other monsters, including a scientist named Alphys, and a robot named Mettaton.

The first contact with the Sea of Mistakes was when they reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, and learning that their entire world was captured inside a monstrous steel cube that was hung in the air below an endless dark sky. It was held by chains above a blue sea that seemed to go down forever. The group came back up the elevator with their findings, but were forbidden to take the elevator up any further by a shaken and paranoid king named Asgore. They were never told why. Going back to what remained of the underground, they built a boat that could fit Napstablook, Alphys, and Mettaton, but could still fit easily inside the lift. Mettaton was carrying the boat back to the elevator when the explosion hit.

Alphys guessed that it was the core erupting. Everyone made it back to the elevator, but the entirety of the core, the king's throne room, and Hotland fell to the earth in a mess of twisted metal and lava. Only a small outcropping in Mt. Ebott remained, overviewing the catastrophe that took place as the sun's bottom hovered just above the horizon. Mettaton described it as “Morbidly beautiful”. The group, complying with Asgore's orders, descended to the sea once again. Alphys stayed behind, saying something about writing a note of warning, and made an excuse about her being more vulnerable because she wasn't a robot nor a ghost. Once in the boat, they began sailing away, Mettaton using thrusters on his arms to propel the boat, and began to travel the sea. When Napstablook caught a glimpse of the elevator ascend back up into the cube, the pair in the boat suddenly felt extremely alone. Alphys was never seen again, nor was they ever see anyone else from the underground. Whether Alphys abandoned them on purpose, or the elevator was called up by someone else, they would never know.

Mettaton and Napstablook sailed for hours, maybe even days, before stumbling across an array of rusted buildings that looked like they were built ages before the cube had ever appeared. Napstablook had decided to sail to the one that looked the least run down, and told Mettaton that they should probably stay there until help arrived. Mettaton did not answer, simply hanging over the side of the boat, lifeless. Napstablook tried to get him to respond, but nothing was working. Once he had stopped using his thrusters, his body had shut down completely. Whether it was the machinery or the soul, the thing that gave him life was now vacant. And now, Napstablook was alone in an unfamiliar and terrifying sea.

Below the building was a small dock that lead to an elevator. Napstablook explored the building for a while, only to find that almost everything he wanted to do would require him having an actual body. It didn't take long before he came to the unfortunate conclusion that he would need to possess Mettaton's body. He begrudgingly did so, feeling intense guilt for using the corpse in such a way, but understood that if he wanted to be saved, he would need the place to stand out. And so, after the course of many failed attempts and many re-reads of the maintenance manuals, Napstablook turned the power on and waited for any sort of rescue. This wait would prove useless, for no rescue ever came.

Though, two living beings did come to visit.  
  
The first was Alphys. Her body was badly beaten and bruised within an inch of her life, but she was somehow still able to speak to Napstablook when she arrived on a large, flat piece of wood. The things from the moon had gotten to her, but they had left her alive to send a message to him. After explaining all she knew about the moon beings and how they were conducting tests in the metal box the underground had been teleported into, she told him that they knew about his whereabouts, but would not take any action as long as no living being would go anywhere near the elevator shaft. Once the message had been transferred, Alphys slowly evaporated into dust that settled on the sea's water. This dust would not be the last of it's kind to touch the water.

It had been months, according to the calendars inside the building. Months of massive piles of dust, ash, and miscellaneous discarded things falling from the sky. Anything from bodies to monster dust to parts of buildings could fall from the sky. Presumably, Napstablook thought, from failed tests. Every once in a while, they would drop gigantic, featureless bodies into the sea who's flesh would rot and fall into the water, making the entire area smell of death for months. The flesh, debris and ash formed mounds and islands in the water, the only semblance of solid ground that seemed to exist in this sea. Bodies would sometimes wash up on the shores of these islands that hadn't turned to ash. Napstablook disliked the thought of their bodies not being laid to rest, so he would gather the bodies he found in the boat, then use a high powered oven in a part of the machine rooms to cremate their bodies. The resulting ashes were spread out to sea. He knew they deserved better, but there were no better options for them.

The second visitor showed up on one of these mounds, which Napstablook mistakenly took for yet another dead body. That's why when a young, purple dragon girl started screaming when she saw him, it shook him a little bit. It took quite a lot of convincing for Susie to get on Napstablook's good side, considering he was basically asking her to trust a robot who had a bunch of bodies on his boat, but he explained to her the situation he was put in, and eventually Susie came around. Napstablook let her stay in the residential area. Since Napstablook didn't need sleep, she was able to sleep wherever she wanted. When she woke up, she seemed to have no memory of anything before she was found on the beach. She had just assumed that she had always lived there with him. As the years went on, the pair connected more, and became rather good friends. Susie was desensitized to the death within a couple years, and Napstablook got a little better at talking in general, although his stuttering still needed work. The strangest thing about Susie, though, was that with all the years she had been with him, she hadn't aged physically. They both just assumed that since she was most likely created and not born, she could very well not age at all.

They counted eight years before the calendars ran out. Give or take a few days, since the sky was eternally dark here, and there was no way to judge what time of day it was since all the clocks had stopped working who knows how long ago. Time has, more or less, stopped mattering a long time ago. Nothing outside of the routine of general upkeep of the building and body cremation has happened that had been of any note. And maybe, they thought, that was for the best.

But then, another Susie arrived. Now, she knew that the home she loved so dearly was fabricated. Everything was a lie. She was fake. Almost everything was. The time when things were real had far passed her. All that was left was this sea. Hell, she could be on a completely different planet for how little she knew. But she couldn't let that get to her. She could still fix this. She just had to figure out how. Susie knew now that these beings had a lot more power than she thought. The power to sculpt worlds and create people out of thin air. She was hoping the seed that cloaked figure gave her would help as much as it needed to. She then realized that seed was only in a small metal box in her coat pocket. It could've easily been knocked out of there and floated away.

“Blook, when you took my clothes off, did you find anything inside?”  
“No, not that I saw... why?”

Susie let her head fall to the ground. She felt the hope inside her die just a little bit.

  
“... Nothing. Let's go back inside, it's freezing out here.”

Wind that blew across the rooftop picked up suddenly. Susie's ruffled hair and patient's robe blew directionless in the wind as the low rumbling of thunder traveled through the air. Susie looked far into the distance to see rolling, pitch black clouds approach her, with sparse flashes of light flickering inside. Of all things, she didn't expect a weather system to exist here. Then again, who knew where “here” was? For all anyone knew, they could be on a different planet entirely. Susie supposed that she'd find out everything she needed when she met whoever was in charge. Whether the answers needed to be forced out of them or not remained to be seen. Hell, maybe she would use force anyway. She needed to make them pay for what they've done somehow.  
  
“S-Susie? That storm looks kinda bad, we should get going...”  
“Right.”

Another deep thunder crack rang through the air as Susie and Napstablook stepped into the elevator. After absorbing so much knowledge, she wasn't sure how to even start a conversation. What was there to talk about? The elevator doors closed. Napstablook pressed a button, but she wasn't sure which one. She was busy looking at her feet, and letting her consciousness dip deep into thought. The people back in hometown were probably worried sick. If, of course, they hadn't incinerated everything already. Don't think of that. Shut up.

“So, uhm... We're gonna head to the residential area now. I've restored all the rooms I can, but none of them are exactly, uh... furnished. So you'll be staying with Susie tonight. Your clothes will be there, too.”  
“Okay.”  
“It'll be confusing for a bit, but I'm sure once you two get to know each other, you'll be fine. I thought we were gonna go exploring for a bit today, but with the storm outside, I guess we'll have to make different plans...”

Susie felt her stomach gurgle a little. It had been a long time since she had eaten. Too long. Napstablook went suspiciously silent for a while.  
“Right... I forgot you're not like the other Susie... f-for some reason, she doesn't need to eat or drink anything. She gets tired, but it's like some of her base needs that most people have... she just, doesn't. You aren't like her, probably, so... we're gonna need to find some food... somehow.”  
“Don't get too worked up about it. I'm not picky. I ate chalk for years.”  
“Oh. Well, alright then... We'll still have to see about getting you something though, c-can't just let you starve, you know.”

“Yeah.”  
With a ding, the elevator doors opened, and the pair stepped out into the hallway.

The residential area was quite unlike the more sterile looking, white walls of the medical bay, and looked more like the elevator, with a deep red velvet adorning the walls from the waist up, while dark brown wood went from the waist down to the floorboards. Said floor was made of the same dark wood as the walls, but with a bright red carpet laid in the middle of the walkway that felt rather nice on her feet. Scattered across the walls were gold colored electric sconces which, along with various chandeliers, lit up dark wooden doors, numbered from one to however many this floor held. The numbers were stenciled on the doors in a sparkling silver paint. Susie assumed the doors lead to bedrooms. The entire place looked incredibly well kept and fancy, leading Susie to question Napstablook about the fact that every interior seemed like it had never been touched by the outside world.

“How does this place look so nice after so many years?”  
“This body is really useful. I can fix and shine stuff up really easily with it, and I don't even have to know how to sometimes. The body just does it for me. It's kinda scary. It has a lot of other cool features too, like cooking and stuff.”  
“Sounds nice.”  
“It is. Oh, and there's a secret mode this body can turn into. I haven't figured out how to get it working yet, but apparently it's great at fighting stuff. Oh well. I don't really like fighting anyway.”

Susie didn't respond, and let the robot move ahead a little to lead her. She still thought her body was far too weak to be doing anything strenuous, and felt she needed a little more rest. Maybe after she properly met the other Susie, she could lie down somewhere. She'd take about anywhere at that point as long as it wasn't another hospital bed. In fact, she was pretty sure she would put a hole through the next thing that made anything close to the beeping of a heart monitor. She semi-stumbled down the hallway for a while until the path turned a sharp right down a passage nearly identical to the one she just traversed. They stopped at a door at the end of the hallway which, like the other doors, was made out of a dark colored wood. What set this one apart, however, was the golden “S” stenciled on the front. Napstablook, though it was unsolicited, attempted to give an explanation.

“S-So we think this meant “suite” originally, because this room is the biggest and nicest, but when S-Susie got here she decided it meant “Susie” instead. Isn't that n-neat?”  
“I guess so.”  
Susie immediately felt rude for responding so dully.

“God, sorry, it's just-”  
“N-No, I get it... You probably need some time alone. Hopefully Susie is somewhere else so you can get that alone time.”  
  


Napstablook proceeded to open up the door to the suite, which had quite the fitting name, if nothing else. Two purple velvet couches sat underneath a large silver chandelier that lit the quite large room. To the left was an open kitchen area with two fridges and marble counter tops, and to the right was a couple of wooden doors. She assumed one led to a bedroom. The other Susie was suspiciously absent from anywhere nearby. It was incredibly silent, making her feel a little uncomfortable. Parallel to the front door was a sliding glass door that lead out to an incredibly unstable looking metal balcony that looked out to the sea, and the hanging test chamber far beyond. Susie wasn't sure how she felt about having the place that was currently imprisoning everything she knew and loved directly in view at all times.

“Well, I'll let you g-get settled in, uhm, enjoy your stay and stuff...”

Napstablook sounded rather uncomfortable, and before Susie was able to say anything at all, he was already out the door. She didn't bother trying to run after him, and instead walked over to one of the couches and laid down. It was large enough to accommodate for her size, and was rather comfortable to lay on. The comfort faded, however, when she realized there was quite the similarity between this room and Hazel's. And then, she began to worry. She had been gone for quite a while now and if not Hazel, Toriel would surely notice her disappearance. They were probably worried sick about her, just as she was about them. Susie sat up on the couch and looked out the window to the steel entrapment miles away. Everything she ever knew... gone.

Susie felt her heart falter as homesickness began to sink in.

  
At some point, from either boredom or exhaustion, Susie drifted off to sleep. She felt no need to do anything else, really. The last bit of hope she had was in that box the cloaked figure gave her, and much like her hope, it had been lost to sea. It wasn't enough that she lost that, either. She had pretty much lost her ability to fight, or even walk normally. If something were to attack her, the likelihood of her coming out on top was considerably lower than usual. At least she was safe. At least, that's what her unconscious mind told her before an incredibly loud female automated voice came over the speakers, accompanied by an equally loud alarm.  
  
“Warning, the descent has begun. Please stay away from all doors and windows.”  
  
Susie shot up in the couch, shaken by the sudden clamorous noises. The lights had went out as well, the chandelier's bright lights replaced by previously unseen red flashing warning lights that had been affixed to various points in the wall. Incredibly heavy dark metal blast doors shut on both the exit to the hallways and the large glass doors leading to the decayed balcony. The automated voice said the same line as before every dozen seconds or so, but the alarm noises had long since ceased. Then, the rumbling and shaking began.

The sound of crashing waves echoed from outside before nothing but the bubbling of water remained. This must have been the descent the voice was talking about. Why had Napstablook never told her of this? The fact that the entire building would periodically sink into the sea seemed to be quite the significant detail, so why leave it out? In fact, this building didn't even seem fitted with any sort of mechanism that would allow that to happen. Was this all just another dream? Light faded from the room and drenched her in a completely silent darkness that took any sense of security she once had away. A further detriment to her safety came in the form of another sentence from the automated voice, and the sound of the blast doors being lifted from the door to the hallway, but not from the balcony door.

  
“The Please refrain from using any mechanical or electrical devices. The use of this intercom and flashlights are acceptable, however candles and lanterns are recommended. Do not, under any circumstances, turn on any light switches. Thank you.”  
  
Shortly after, Napstablook's voice came over the intercom in the automated voice.

“H-Hello? Oh gosh, if you can hear this, I'm really sorry. Y-You're gonna wanna stay where you are. I'm with Susie a-”  
“Hi, my clone!” the other Susie budded in.

“Susie, p-please.”  
“Sorry...”  
“We're gonna come get you and bring some stuff with us. We will explain but please don't go outside, you'll probably get lost. Listen t-to that warning too. B-Be there soon.”  
“Bye!”  
  
As soon as their transmission ended, the blast door to outside opened, however there was a newly fastened reinforced window on both sides of the original door's, turning it into a gigantic window to the outside world. This world, however, was nothing like the one she had once seen. The entire building, except perhaps the roof, was submerged underneath the sea. Underneath the water's surface now, she was able to see the source of the faint blue light that she saw from above the water a while ago. Dozens of small, dim blue orbs floated like buoys a couple meters below the surface, held underwater by black fishing nets that were anchored far below where the orb's light would show, descending into the abyssal darkness of the deep sea. The orbs were swaying a bit, probably due to the intense winds that were surely ripping across the sea. Susie was almost lulled into a trance by their gentle sways and flickers until a loud, resounding knock at the door shook her out of her near-stupor.

“Susie? It's us!” The younger Susie's voice yelled excitedly. The door swung open and the surprisingly happy looking and beaming young Susie stumbled through, a basket of candles cradled in her arms. Napstablook followed behind her, nervously tapping the ends of his fingers together before closing the door shut once they were both inside. Susie wandered around the room, placing and lighting candles all around the area as the flickering orange light of the candles drowned out the blue glow from the orbs outside.

  
“S-Susie, I-”  
“Man, this is gonna get confusing quickly. We can't just have two Susies, that's super weird.”  
“Well, what do you suggest?”  
“Well one of us is going to have to give up our names, obviously.”  
“Who, then?”  
The older Susie spoke up.  
“I'll get a new name. Calling her something for a long time then calling her something new would be weird. I'm newer.”  
The younger Susie responded.

“Yeah, but I kinda wanna new name anyways. Besides, you're older, you're more used to being called somethin'. Hmm, but if I did have a new name, what would it be like...?”  
  


This younger version of herself made Susie incredibly off put. If you had compared their personalities without the looks, you would never guess they were anything alike. This one seemed so much more hopeful. Bubbly, even. The surreal nature of everything that had happened within these few hours had left her in sort of a daze. Nothing made sense anymore.

“So what do you think?” The clone said to her.  
“I... I dunno. Just whatever sounds good.”  
“How about Suze? It's easy to say, and it's not too far off from Susie. Plus, it's shorter, which is pretty fitting actually. Right, Blooky?”  
“Y-Yeah...”  
“Then it's settled! No more confusion! N-Namewise, anyway...”

The newly named Suze beamed and walked over to the edge of the room and into one of the doors Susie hadn't bothered to check yet, dragging a long coffee table out in front of the two couches in the middle of the room, placing a tall, red candle in the middle of it, and lighting it with a match. Blowing the match out, she sat on the velvet couch parallel to Susie's and looked around with a semi-forced smile on her face. This smile soon turned into a look of regret.  
  
“Susie, I'm... sorry I acted the way I did to you. It's like, super weird that this is happening but... I should've been more respectful. So, here.”  
Susie dug into her basket and pulled out Susie's clothes, laying them out on the table, next to the candle. Well, some of the clothes, anyway. The coat that went over her white shirt was nowhere to be seen, and the once pristine white shirt had a large line of stitches going up the back of it. Similar stitches ran up the black pant's left leg, from the bottom of the leg up to the middle of the thigh area.

“I-I'm no artisan, but, I fixed your clothes up for you. The best that I could, anyway. I hope it's good enough for you.”  
  
...Was this the first genuine smile Susie's made since she got here?

“Geez, Suze. You didn't have to do that.”  
“Well what am I gonna do, just let you wear that patient's gown everywhere? No, I wanted to. It's the least I could do.”

“Well, thank you. And, you're forgiven for how you acted, though I kinda didn't really care in the first place. The gesture was nice.”  
Suze giggled under her breath, as a more authentic smile reached her lips.  
“So uhh... Bathroom's right behind me, if you wanna go change.”  
“Right. I'll be right back.”  
“Take your time! We don't have anywhere to go, just remember not to turn any lights on.”  
  


She was asking all about that when she was done changing. Susie sat up off of the couch and walked to the door behind Susie, her clothes tucked under her arm. The door opened to a candle lit, dark bathroom. Dull reflections of the candle's fire bounced off of the wall and floor's ceramic tiles, the air stagnant and stale. The bathtub, sink, and toilet had all seen better days, evident by the rust slowly gathering around the edges of them all, and the mirror had been cracked into a spiderweb-like pattern. Susie shut the door and untied the strings that held the hospital gown on her body, letting it fall to the floor softly and quickly changing into the more decent clothing. She looked at what little of her shattered self image she could see in the mirror. Her face was distorted and cleaved apart in many different places and ways, and seeing herself in such a way made her feel... sick. She quickly walked out of the room, leaving whatever terrible feelings she had felt behind in that mirror.

Sitting back down on the couch, Suze quickly perked up.  
“So? How are they?”  
“Good as new.”  
“I'm glad you like them!”  
“Yeah. But... I need to know what's going on here. Like, why we're underwater, and why we can't turn any lights on.”  
Suze's smile immediately fell from her face.  
“W-Well... It's storming outside. And when the weather gets really bad, a, uh... thing, gets really agitated, and really sensitive to electrical devices. It usually isn't a problem, since when it isn't storming it doesn't seem to go far from around the cube. But when it storms... You really don't wanna be around it when it gets angry like that. It can like, sense stuff from miles and miles away, and it'll do anything to destroy what makes it angry. It's super picky with what sets it off, though. Like, as long as it doesn't make noise for a long time, or makes any light, it doesn't care.”  
“Well, what is this 'thing'?”  
“It's like... a really, really tall, skinny... thing. It's super dark, and has a lot of hair. It's face has a bunch of weird eyes on it, and one of them has a scar across it that shoots a wave of energy or something.”  
“How do you know all of this?”  
“We... learned the hard way. One day, we didn't turn anything off or sink the building into the sea. It took... a while to repair this place. Even for Blooky, and he's amazing at repairing stuff. Even finding the parts to build everything again took what felt like forever. Actually, the whole 'descent' thing was Blooky's idea. He found the parts, programmed everything, built everything, it's great.”  
“Did he make those lights in the water, too?”  
“Actually, no. We have no idea what those are, and we haven't been deep enough down there to find where they come from. Doesn't bother us, though.”  
Suze stayed silent for a bit. She seemed to doze off into space for a minute, a blank look on her face.  
“You okay, Suze?”  
“Y-Yeah... Just thinking about that day... It got here so fast...-”  
  


The entire building creaked as a huge force shook the group's surroundings, everyone making surprised gasps at the sudden disruption of peace. Suze looked out the window with a grave look on her face, and watched the orbs outside slowly flicker and die out one by one, darkness slowly closing in until the only light left was that of the candles. Susie felt her entire body tense up when Suze uttered her next words.

“I think it's coming to check up on us.”  
  
A feeling of immense dread washed over Susie as the entire group fell silent. All they could do is watch out the window in preparation, anxious for whatever it was that would come to the window. Susie felt her heart skip a beat when she saw the silhouette of the upper torso of an enormous figure just beyond the reaches of the candle's light. It's head alone was the size of her entire body, and it seemed to slightly twitch from left to right in an unnatural pattern. Susie had to cover her mouth to not scream when a gigantic, near skeletal black hand placed it's palm upon the bottom left corner of the window, covering an entire quarter of it's surface. It's skin was like dark, burnt leather, and looked tight to it's bones. Then, another hand of the creature pressed against the top right corner, and the silhouette came closer into the light of the candles, tilting it's head from side to side.

Coming into view was the creature's hair, which seemed to be made up of incredibly long, dark strands that floated around it's face. The hair was somehow heavy enough to be pulled down in the water, the long, almost tentacle like strands going far below their line of sight, and obscuring the being's actual face. It simply floated in front of the window for what felt like hours before a bright pinkish red light beamed from beneath the hair's obscurity, lighting up the entire room and dousing out the orange light of the candles, replacing it with an eerie red glow. Nobody dared move a muscle. Suddenly, the creature's light faded, and the massive entity quickly moved to the left of the window, it's hair trailing behind for a while before nothing but the orange light remained. The blue orbs did not begin to glow again though, which still made the atmosphere of the room feel unnerving.

That's the thing that assaulted her when she first got here. It only attacked once the elevator started working again because it noticed an electrical device in it's area. It's the reason the box was missing. It's the reason she's in such a terrible place, dejected from all that she's ever known. The reason she can't fight as effectively anymore. And judging by the power it's already shown, and it's size, there was no way to make it pay for what it did to her. This brought an unnatural amount of anger to her heart. The lack of control she really had was beginning to take a toll on her. Suze, on the other hand, breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
“God, I hate that every time. At least it didn't seem to react to you being here, so we're still safe, it looks like.”  
“What the hell was that thing?”  
“Well we don't know for sure. All we know is we really, really don't wanna mess with it.”

The group sat in silence for a bit, hearing the storm above the water begin to pick up, the swaying of the now unlit orbs getting more sporadic. Suze laid down on the couch and sighed again, looking up at the ceiling.  
“Yeah, storms usually last quite a bit, so get comfortable.”  
Napstablook spoke up for the first time in a while.  
“I-I'm just gonna go into rest mode for a bit.”  
As soon as he said that, the near inaudible mechanical whirs went completely silent, and his body went limp, still standing upright on his one wheel. Susie was now completely alone with her doppelganger. She laid down on her own couch as well, but kept an eye on the window leading out into the water in slight worry.

“Oh, don't worry. It won't be back again until the next storm. At least, it usually isn't.”  
“Can't be too careful.”  
“Right. Uhh, you hungry or thirsty or anything?”  
“... No, not really.”  
“Okay.”  
  


That was strange. She hadn't felt hungry since she left Toriel's house, and it's been quite a while since. Maybe it was her dragon resilience. Maybe it was something more. Maybe leaving where she was created removed a part of what made her real. Stop it. Why deny it? She was a fabrication. Fake. Stop. She felt useless, a shell of her former self. She felt empty. Hollow. Please stop.  
“Are you okay, Susie?”  
“What? Why?”  
“Look at your hands.”  
She looked down at her hands, and saw her claws in her mouth. She had been biting them subconsciously. She quickly put her hands to her side, and looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah. I'm fine.”

“...Alright.”  
  


She could tell by the tone of her voice that she didn't believe her. Which she supposed was alright, since Susie didn't believe herself either. She had to think of a plan. The box wasn't an option anymore, so she had to think of alternatives. If she found some way to climb the elevator shaft back up to Hometown without using electricity, she could warn everyone about the beings from the moon. Tell them the truth. But there's no way they would believe her. Even before she found the bunker, everything that had happened up until that point was unbelievable enough, let alone the discoveries she had recently made. And what if her finding the bunker was a stroke of luck? A mistake made by the ones who created it? What if she gets back to hometown only to find the bunker gone? She would be under their control again. So what other options were there?

Well, that door just before the elevator in the bunker had yet to be explored, but remembering what she had heard behind the door, she could only assume what lurked behind it definitely wasn't friendly. Though, if she waited for her strength to return to her, assuming it could at all, she could perhaps best whatever waited beyond the door, and explore beyond. Besides that, she had thought that maybe there was a maintenance hatch or something in the elevator shaft. Something to get into the inner workings of the cube, and maybe further. She suspected since the cube was hoisted in the air by chains, there had to be something above to hold the cube above the water. Maybe whatever was holding the cube was the main source of operations for the moon beings. The mother ship, maybe. Though, unless there was a way to ascend above the cube easily, like an elevator of some sort, she would have to climb those chains for quite a while. And that's assuming the cube doesn't have security of some sort, and she doesn't get caught. She knew the power they had all too well, so she tried not to imagine the extent of which her suffering could be if she was captured by them.

Susie sighed once more, staring at the glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Whatever the case was, she couldn't do much until her body healed fully. So that just meant she had to wait. Maybe that was the thing that truly frustrated her. The waiting. The hesitation. Her fragile body keeping the gates to her victory shut tight. She could only hope her frustration didn't boil over.

What she might do if she got truly angry scared her.  
  
Susie slept on the couch again, and unlike last time, her slumber wasn't rudely awoken by any alarms and loud noises. Instead, the soft blue glow of the lights outside the window slowly pulled her brain from the murky depths of unconsciousness. Blur slowly faded from her still tired eyes as she rubbed it away with her fingers against her eyelids. When they opened, her eyes were treated to the pretty, almost sparkling cobalt light flooding the room. It felt calming. She rolled over to her right side and this sense of calm quickly got ripped from her body, as she was staring right into Suze's glaring eyes from the other couch. Susie felt her bones jump out of her skin as she gasped in shock, Suze blinking quickly and sitting up.  
  
“S-Sorry! I didn't mean to watch you or anything I was kinda just looking that way a-”  
“The hell, Suze?! Don't you sleep?”

“Yeah, I just... wasn't tired, is all. You were though, you were out for a good three hours or so. The storm's gone, but I figured I'd at least let you and Blooky sleep.”

Susie shook her head and rolled over onto her back once more.

“Well, since I'm up now, you can wake him up, too.”  
“Alright.”  
  


Suze hopped off of the couch, it making a small creak as her body departed from the cushions. Outside her vision, Suze's footsteps could be heard directly behind her, then closer to the kitchen.  
“Blook! Wake up!”

A barely audible mechanical whirring ringed through the air.

“Hm? I'm awake...”  
“Storm's gone.”  
“... Oh.”  
“So can we get out of the water now?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Cool. Susie, wanna come with?”

“Not really.”  
“Alrighty. C'mon Blooky, we got stuff to do.”

  
With those words exchanged, the pair left the room, closing the door firmly behind them. A couple minutes later, the blast doors came down, and the mechanical rumbling began. A couple minutes more, and they receded, leaving the building high in the sky once again. In addition to this, the lights turned on as well, with no horrors around to get angry at them. Susie got off the couch begrudgingly, and walked to the window. And there, again was the cube she despised so much.

“Don't worry guys, I'll get you outta there. Somehow.” She whispered to herself, having as much hope in her words as she could muster. Susie took a deep breath and stared the cube down, and was about to turn away when she saw something incredibly strange. An oddly shaped, black figure dropped from the bottom of the box, and into the sea below, disappearing from her view as fast as it had came. She wasn't sure what to think of it at first, but then she realized that the only place it could've came from is the elevator shaft. Had someone else found the bunker? Maybe she wasn't as alone as she thought, but without an elevator, how did they get down safely? No matter, this needed investigating right away.

Susie turned around so quickly she nearly tripped on the coffee table. She only now noticed that once the lights were on, she could see that all of the candles were gone, as was the basket that held them. A minor detail, but if she would miss something minor yet rather obvious at the same time, maybe she wasn't in a position to go investigating after all. She would do so anyway, of course. She just needed to heighten her senses a little. She passed the coffee table, went through the door, and walked into the regal hallways of the residential area. She spent no time gawking at the scenery, though. Her footsteps echoed loudly through the empty halls, making her feel a strange mix of loneliness and anxiety. The walk to the elevator took no time at all, thankfully, waiting on the wall across from it's doors for Napstablook and Suze to return. When the elevator opened, Suze and Blook walked out, Suze being a bit surprised to see Susie so soon.

“Uh, hey-”  
“I saw something fall from below the cube. I think someone fell down the elevator shaft that I came from.”  
“... And?”  
“Well, we have to go check that out, don't we?”  
“I mean, we were already coming to tell you we were gonna head out for a bit. We weren't planning on taking you so soon, but I guess if you wanna we can take you.”  
“What do you mean 'head out'?”  
“Well we're gonna take a small boat out to the ash islands and look for anything useful that might have been left behind. Most of the islands closest to this place have been picked clean by us, so we'll have to get pretty close to the cube anyway.”  
Napstablook spoke up.

“Are you sure you should be coming with us so soon, though? N-Not that I don't think you're capable or anything, but you're still healing.”  
“I don't feel that bad anymore.”  
“... Alright, well come in and we'll head down to the dock.”

Susie did as Napstablook suggested, and walked into the elevator, between Suze and him. Suze pressed the bottom button on the elevator, labeled “D”. The steel doors closed slowly, and the elevator began it's short lived descent. When the doors opened again, she walked out onto the red and rusted metal walkway that made up the dock, breathing in the relatively fresh air of the sea. The dock was a simple metal walkway that extended from a small platform that surrounded the elevator shaft. To the left of the walkway was a small, wooden, three person row boat, held in place by a rope that was tied to a leg of the walkway. Thankfully it would be able to accommodate everyone involved, so no one was left behind in the building. The boat was in quite a good condition considering how long these two had likely been using it.  
  
“It's not anything spectacular, but it works for us. Climb on in the middle seat.”  
Suze hopped in and moved up to the front most seat of the boat. Susie carefully climbed in and sat in the seat behind her, with Napstablook following close by and sitting at the back. Without further ado, Napstablook extended an arm behind him to just behind the boat, and just below the water's surface. Loud whirring accompanied by the sound of splashing water rung through the air as the boat began moving forward, the only waves in the sea being the ones made by the boat. The water surrounding the building was incredibly deep, but as they got further and further away, the waters got much more shallow, the ashy bed of the sea being fully visible from above the water.

The boat weaved between small islands of ash as it sailed across the water, most of them looking completely picked over and bare. But as the boat went on, the islands seemed to have accumulated more and more objects on and underneath their surface. She saw massive chunks of metal, parts of buildings, doors that stuck out of the ash and led to nowhere... and body parts. Grasping fists and hands reaching towards the sky from the ash, bones and flesh, arms and legs, marrow and skulls. She felt incredibly nauseated when the realization came that it was likely that most of the ash these islands were made of were once living beings.

Susie, looked over to Suze, and felt even more sick. She had a smile on her face.

“What... Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, I can't wait to see what we'll find out here. We almost always find cool stuff out here, it's like treasure hunting!”

...She was completely desensitized. She thought nothing of the death that surrounded her. To her, this was just another regular occurrence, and it was likely the same for Napstablook. The death, the rot, the ash. It was near inconsequential to them.

She felt her stomach lurch in vitriolic disgust.

  
Calming down proved to be quite the obstacle. Every inhale Susie took felt strained and every exhale left her breathless. This was really happening. The boat rocked slightly as she leaned over the side in fear of bile rising from her stomach. Her tired, nauseated reflection stared back at her, as did the murky shallows of the water below. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of souls rested here. Though, perhaps “rested” wasn't the right word to use. There was no way someone would find solace in this place, burnt to ash and labeled as a mistake. No one deserved this fate.  
“...Susie? Are you okay?”  
  


No response. The question wasn't repeated. Instead, after a couple minutes, the boat pulled up to the shore of an ash island. Susie averted her eyes from the waters for a moment and saw that Napstablook and Suze hopped out, bringing a stake with a rope tied to it that led to the back of the boat. Using a hammer Suze brought onto shore, she hammered the stake into the ground. The island itself held a half destroyed brick building on it's surface, and looked to be one half of a larger structure. It's left side was lacking a wall, and it's right held nothing but a door and a couple windows. There was a rectangular sign above the door that Susie suspected at one point told viewers the name of the building. Now, it's blank, wind-worn face told nothing. Besides this small group, however it had no one to tell anymore. It's purpose was complete.

Besides the building, there was little of note on the island besides a few ashen hands reaching out of the heap. This, however, was a trait nearly all of the surrounding islands had. Napstablook took one of the hands into his own, and attempted to pull whatever it was attached to out of the ground. Instead, the hand simply turned to dust at his touch, crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the ash that surrounded it. Susie decided that was a good time to look back to the water. Suze called out, and almost said something about how she should come onto the shore too, but Napstablook quickly shushed her. He probably understood what Susie had to process. It was... unnatural. The way Suze smiled. Anyone would be overcome by sorrow in a place like this, but was Suze, a perpetually young soul, really this desensitized already? So used to the death that surrounded her? How would you even begin to let that not affect you? It made Susie sick to her stomach.

Susie knew she would have to get used to it too, if she was to stay here. Hopefully she wouldn't for any large amount of time, but if it had to be that way, so be it. She could get used to it, right? She looked from the water and up to the cube, to where she saw the figure drop. She was a bit closer now, and could see the ripped elevator cables dangling from the hole in the cube in more detail. She remembers the figure that dropped from the elevator shaft, and suddenly feels just a little less safe. The possibilities filled her both with fear and intense curiosity. Susie turned toward the pair on the island and yelled to them.

“So when are we heading over to the cube?”

“Probably pretty soon, not finding much here.” Napstablook replied.

Susie took a deep breath. She hoped that perhaps this would go by faster than she thought it would. She turned back toward the water and froze stiff, daring not to move a muscle. There, floating on the water's surface was the top half of a human head. It's sickly wet, bald head reflected off the water, as did it's gray, lifeless eyes. The face seemed to be completely lacking a nose. Not as if one was removed, but as if it never had one in the first place. It's mouth was affixed in a blank, emotionless expression. As for if the human was living or dead, Susie had no idea. But she was just as shocked to see it either way. She yelled back to the group, but didn't turn her body away from the head.

“Guys... There's a body or something here, come take a loo-”

  
Suze's scream resounded through the air, and Susie barely had time to react as a gigantic, twisted hand shot from the water beside the head. It's palm impacted the boat just after Susie jumped from it, the boat shattering to splinters as she fell upon the island's shore. Her back stung a bit from the fall, but she didn't think much of it. She crawled back a bit before stumbling to her feet. The head, as well as the hand, stayed still despite everything. The hand, and the arm it was attached to, was incredibly large, and almost bulbous as muscles struggled to stay beneath it's sickly wet, pinkish skin. The arm was grotesquely twisted in many areas, and was long enough to lead back towards the head, and underneath the water. Perhaps the most disgusting part of the limb was it's fingers. They had some semblance of fingernails left, but were horribly disfigured and pulled back, revealing a dark red, infected looking layer of skin beneath where the nail should stay snug to the skin. The tip of each finger was covered, or otherwise stained in a dark red substance akin to blood.

Soon, another arm shot from the other side of the water near the head, and slammed down onto the shore. This arm, however, had something else attached to it besides a hand. A large, curved blade that resembled a fish hook, and was almost the size of Susie herself, was haphazardly attached to the end of the arm with a mixture of rope and barbed wire. This time, Susie was sure that the red stains on the blade was that of blood. What she wasn't sure of, however, was it's origin. It could have been from the terrible way it was attached to the arm, or from one of this creature's victims. Napstablook and Suze joined Susie on either side, and looked on with as equal a mix of fear and disgust as her. Then, in unison, they began to back away.

“What the hell is that?!” Susie blurted out.  
“I-I don't know, I've n-never seen it before.” Napstablook responded shakily.

Just as Napstablook finished his statement, the creature began to use it's arms to slowly drag itself towards them. The head finally moved, as more and more of it's abhorrent body was exposed to the air. Besides it's arms, from the chest upward it's body was that of a normal, human's. Below, however, was a giant tangled mess of pale organs that had long since served their purpose, and merely acted as dead weight behind the abomination. The organs tapered off into what almost looked to be a tail, making it's lower body almost snakelike in appearance. The head, however, kept it's blank expression. It didn't even seem like it was taking pleasure from stalking it's prey. It simply moved towards them nonchalantly and near-lifelessly. Defeating this thing would be incredibly difficult, and Susie wasn't even sure where to begin. But she hoped that, if nothing else, Napstablook and Suze would be able to help somehow.

Though, depending on how ferocious this creature would end up being, maybe hope wasn't enough this time.

  
There was an awkward lull in motion and sound. Seconds passed by, not a noise to reach anyone's ears besides the gentle sound of water that surrounded them. Susie felt her entire body shake, usually without much fear in a situation of danger, but finding it's creeping constriction overwhelming her like never before. A clamorous cacophony resounded through the air as the creature used both of it's arms to lunge forward, Suze barely dodging it's hand by jumping backwards. Napstablook didn't move in his seemingly paralyzed state, and was lucky to not be cleaved in two by the creature's bladed limb. The very end of the blade struck just before his body. Susie wasn't in any immediate danger from it's arms, but was instead met face to face with the beady white eyes of the beast before her.  
  
“Susie!”  
Suze screamed, as the creature's hand entered Susie's peripheral vision at too swift a speed to react. It's fleshy fingers grabbed a hold of her in an incredibly strong grip, clasping Susie's arms to her side and wrapping the finger closest to her head around her neck. She was left helpless and at the nature of the abomination. She felt her bones weaken as it squeezed just a little harder. Blood rushed to her head as she began to feel lightheaded from the constriction of it's choking grasp. The sound of pierced skin met Susie's ears, and she looked down as best she could to see Suze right next to it's shoulder, a piece of rebar in her hands. She had driven it into the side of the creature. It, however, showed little reaction to the attack other than slight annoyance.  
  
Susie felt the wind rush against her face as she was held into the air, then promptly thrown forcefully to the ground, impacting the ash and making a shallow imprint in the ground where she once stood. The pain was enough to knock the wind out of her lungs, leaving her desperate and gasping for air. She could only hope something didn't break. The sound of metal upon metal ringed through the air, and Susie turned her head to the right, seeing sparks fly from the motionless mechanical body of Napstablook. She would scream if she had a breath to do it with. Already she felt her consciousness begin to fail her. Susie looked to her left, and a terrified looking Suze stumbling backwards met her gaze. She wanted to get up to help, she wanted to help her friends, but she simply didn't have the strength. She thought back to the dark world, how she had the courage to stand up to the king. The strength to help Ralsei and Kris in their time of need came so easily to her that day. But here, there was no strength left. No one to come to their aid. It seemed to be over. She felt her consciousness leave her mind once again, feeling an immense shame in her heart from being so... useless. A scream rang through the air as Susie's vision went black.

For a moment, there was nothing. No sound to reach her ears. No taste of blood on her tongue. No horrors awaiting just beyond her eyelids. No pain from the impact. No thoughts of guilt. Nothing.

Until, a faint sound reached her. The sound of tearing flesh. The chewing of meat. The occasional crunch of bone being crushed between teeth. The trickle of blood.  
  
Susie's body went cold. She could feel her closed eyelids weighing heavily on her eyes. She couldn't stop herself from opening her eyes, even though she feared more than anything the sight she would see when she did. Light flooded her vision as she opened her eyes, and saw the horror that lay before her. And though a horror it was indeed, it was one she was not expecting. Suze perched on top of the creature's now lifeless body like a vulture. It was turned on it's back, it's belly facing the sky. Suze's feet were placed between it's shoulders and the base of it's head. The face was no longer recognizable as Suze's clawed hands dug around in it's hollowed out skull, pulling out glossy and wet pieces of flesh and quickly forcing each one into her mouth, eagerly chewing and swallowing each little bit as blood nearly poured from her mouth. She was hunched over it's head, eating out of it as if it's skull as if it was a bowl of food. After minutes and minutes of Susie watching on in confused and horrified terror, she felt the tiny amount of time awake she was gifted, or perhaps cursed with, begin to run out.

Almost as if Suze knew this, she got up from her crouched and hunched over position, leaving the corpse behind and slowly stumbling towards Susie. She didn't dare move, knowing whatever now inhabited Suze's body was no longer the Suze she once knew. Her eyes were now a pure, near-radiant white. A trait that reminded her starkly of the mimics that inhabited her and Hazel's body back home. Suze crouched over Susie's body much like she did with the beast's body, and grabbed a hold of her cheek, turning her head and forcing her eyes to meet the white and lifeless eyes of Suze. She tilted her head sideways a bit. Susie's vision began to blur and darken. The last thing she saw and heard before everything cut out was the sound of tearing and stretching flesh as white, tattered wings erupted from Suze's back.

Then, the nothingness returned. Her previous unconscious memories were of Hazel's decapitated body, standing upright and spewing an unending dark cloud from it's neck. Susie was drenched in this fog once more, swimming but not drowning, breathing yet breathless. She found her footing in the murky darkness once again, and ran for as far as her legs could take into the abyssal black in which she awoke. From behind her came a light. A dim, unsaturated blue glow that she had been far too familiar with. She turned around, and saw the pale moon nearly blind her. It was unnaturally large, so large it almost filled her vision entirely. Yet, it still felt so far away from her. She took a step towards it, but found herself restrained in doing so, somehow.

She noticed a hair-thin wire pulled taut that was somehow attached to her foot. She felt an uneasy dread cover her body from head to toe as she noticed that these wires were attached to more than just her feet. Her arms, knees, hands, elbows, head and torso all had the thread attached. She followed the thread with her vision, it now being clearly seen under the light of the moon. Her gaze led upward and upward. Eager to see the master of what she must have assumed to be it's puppet. She wouldn't remember what she saw. Every other minuscule detail could be recollected instantly, but what she saw evaded her. Even as she witnessed it in the moment, it was as if it had attempted to do all it can to blot it from her memory.

What she did remember, however, was that what she saw was enough to make her scream in absolute terror. The moon responded with hundreds of it's own.

The nothingness returned once more, and for once, Susie wanted nothing else.

No repeating tones of a heart rate monitor this time. Silence. After a few minutes, the silence was broken by the faint sound of whistling wind. Susie opened her eyes to see the glittering white chandelier above her. The pain from the previous encounter had mysteriously vanished. In fact, she felt better than ever. Even the dull pain from the elevator incident had completely ceased to be. She got up into a sitting position, and saw none other but Suze sitting across from her. The normal Suze. Once she noticed Susie, she plastered that familiar smile upon her face. Her eyes were back to normal, and she no longer had blood dripping from her mouth. She was acting as if nothing strange had happened.

“So, how was your first expedition to the islands?” Suze asked, in such a casual manner it made Susie uneasy. She didn't know how to respond.  
“Suze, d-don't you think that's a little mean to ask?” Napstablook said from behind the kitchen counter.

“It was just a joke, Nappy. It's not my fault she passed out in the boat, but I guess it makes sense.”  
“I did what?” Susie replied.  
“Yeah, you totally threw up and passed out while we were getting stuff from one of the islands. We came back right after, but you're fine.”  
Susie couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“N-No, there was this huge monster that attacked us. It hurt Napstablook and y-you... killed it.”  
“I did? Wow, the version of me in your dream is really strong! But, really, you just passed out.”  
“Th-There's no way, it was real, I-”  
“Woah, woah, calm down. You've been really stressed, I get it. I was like that too, for a little bit.”  
  


Susie remembered the strike at Napstablook that the creature made, and got an idea. She shot up from the couch, and walked over to him. On his left side, there was a dent around the middle of his body.  
“Well, then where did this dent come from? In my dream he got hit right there, too!”  
“Uhh... What a coincidence? He got caught between a wall and a mechanical arm in the machine room while you were asleep.”  
“You really expect me to believe that?”

Suze's cheery smile faltered, slowly switching to a more neutral expression.  
“Susie. What's more likely, that you had a weird dream that just so happened to mirror real life events, or that all that stuff actually happened, then suddenly didn't happen without a trace?”  
“I know what I saw, it was real. What, you think I'm crazy?”  
  


Suze stood up and began to yell in anger, her voice cracking a couple times.

“Yes! You are crazy! We all are, and that's not our fault! You think I didn't have weird visions and dreams when I first got here? I could've sworn they were real, too. But they weren't. You're... Just adjusting. You're going crazy, but everything will be okay. You just need to calm the hell down and accept things as they are. If you don't, you'll just go even further into this hole you're making for yourself.”  
  
Susie was taken aback. The last thing she expected was for Suze to show such negative emotion. But... maybe she was right. She'd had dreams before that felt as real as ever, and still woken up just fine. Why would this be any different? Perhaps, in a world where all she had trusted as true turned out to be a facade, she was less trusting of everything. Even, as it seemed, her own mind. Napstablook let himself out of the room quietly as Susie sat back down on the purple fabric couch, her head in her hands.

“I'm sorry Suze.”

“No, I'm sorry. I really shouldnt've freaked out like that. I-I hope that didn't like, ruin our potential friendship or something, I really meant the best out of what I said.”  
“Don't worry about it. You were right, I just need to calm down.”

Suze walked over to the bathroom, yelling from inside.  
“Let me hook up a bath for you. Don't worry, it's clean water. I'm sure you could use it right now.”  
“Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.”  
  


The sound of rushing water splashing and echoing off of porcelain soon followed, and Susie silently mulled over her experience. It didn't take long for a tear to fall from her cheek to the floor. None others followed, though. She knew better. Or at least, she thought she did. Did she know anything anymore? It became monotonous to think of such things over and over, but she imagined anyone's thoughts would be swamped with these same emotions had they been in the same situation as her. It took only a dozen minutes or so, but the bath was eventually full, and Suze left her to her own devices to go catch up with Napstablook. Susie stood idle in the stagnant, white room. Averting her gaze from the shattered mirror that made her feel sick before, she pressed the doorknob forward and twisted it, locking the door. She had hoped that, at the very least, it would keep unwanted intrusions at bay. She looked to the counter and spied a small device that looked like a two way radio of some kind, and beside it was a note. The note was short and to the point, reading:  
  
“1 – suze

2 – blook

If something's wrong, push the button on the side, speak, then release. Keep it with you.

~S”

Susie certainly appreciated the gesture, as this building seemed quite large, and having a secure way to speak to others was definitely needed. She wasn't sure if she trusted Suze completely still, so she turned the dial on the front of the radio to the two marked on it's face. The dial went up to nine, though she wasn't surprised only one and two were marked with any importance. Who else was there to call? Susie clicked the button on the side of the device and held it up to her mouth.

“Hey, this is Susie. Checking if this thing works.”  
She let go of the button, and the crackly voice of Napstablook rung through the low fidelity speaker.  
“Ah, it works. That's nice, b-but try to talk to Suze next.”  
“Yeah, after my bath though.”

“I-It would really be best to talk to her right no-”  
“I feel like we need space.” Susie spoke bluntly.  
“A-Alright... have a good bath...”  
The crackling stopped as the transmission did. The soft sound of clothes colliding with the floor preceded Susie's disrobing as she got ready for her bath. As she looked at her attire, she noticed that her clothes were quite clean as well. Near spotless, in fact. Surely ash would have stained a large amount of it had the encounter with the hook blade creature happened. Perhaps it really was all in her head.

She examined the water thoroughly, dipping a single finger into the water and letting it's warmth surround her scales. The liquid did in fact seem pure. Susie figured this place must have some sort of filtration system. The sound of the steaming water's surface being disrupted followed soon after her likely unneeded investigations. She laid down, her body fitting the tub quite well. She rested and closed her eyes, letting the warm, clean water envelop and cleanse her entire body up to her shoulders. It did well to relax her body, and even though her mind was still racing, the relaxation did help to soothe her mind at least a little. She let her hair float indiscriminately around her head, dipping herself into the water deep enough to drench the back of her head. To Susie, the concept of taking a bath, or any sort of self cleaning for that matter, had been alien to her for about her whole life until just recently. At least she could take solace in the fact that there was always a place for her to cleanse herself here, even if the outside world is so cruel and disturbing.  
  
The outside world. The cube. The body that fell from the bottom of it. Shivers ran down her entire body like she'd been electrocuted, her zen like state of mind quickly shattering just as fast as it had formed. She saw the body drop from the bottom of the cube before she had even thought of getting in that boat, and supposedly she only passed out after she got in it.

Which means whatever person, monster, creature or otherwise that Susie saw drop from the cube... was real.

It's still out there.

  
What short time Susie was graced with to relax was unceremoniously cut off by the realization she just had. Something fell from the cube, it could've been anything, it could've been nothing, but this chance was too high of a risk to leave unanswered. As much as she would've loved to stay as long as possible in the warm blanket of heated water, her curiosity was much stronger of a driving force than comfort. Susie sat up in the bathtub and grasped the small plastic water plug at the bottom of the tub, giving way with little effort as the distorted chortling sounds of water rushing through pipes reverberated through the room. Small splashes soon followed as Susie cautiously lifted herself out of the tub and onto the porcelain floor below, snatching a towel off of the sink and drying herself off quickly. Before she knew it, she had slipped into her old clothes and was heading out the door.

“Susie?” The crackling voice of Suze rung through the radio just as Susie was about to close the door. What a coincidence. Susie reluctantly switched the dial to “1”, picked up the radio, and clicked the button on the side.  
“Yeah?”  
“Why didn't you contact me sooner?”  
“Uhmm, guess I forgot? Sorr-”  
“You really should've sooner. You did with Napstablook, but not me.”  
Okay, that was a bit... obsessive.  
“All I did was get in the shower first, calm down.”  
Something audibly snapped from Suze's end of the transmission, as if something had been forcibly broken in half. Then, no more words were spoken for about ten seconds. An uncomfortable silence filled the air before Susie eventually spoke up.  
“Uhm... Suze?”  
Her cheery as ever voice came piercing through the radio once again.  
“Heh, I guess you're right, Susie. Sorry, it's just weird having more than one other person to talk to.”  
“Right... well, do you think we could head down to the docks again? I didn't get to check the under the cube last time.”  
“Why would you? There's nothing but open water under the cube, if anything had fallen from it, it would've drowned.”  
“What if it can swim? Fly, even? There's really no harm in checking-”  
Another loud, emphatic snapping sound came through the radio, but with almost no silence following it.

“N-No, there's lots of harm, actually. What if you pass out again? What if that thing kills us all? You don't know what it could be, you just don't, so stay here, please. The docks aren't even ready, the boat is still broken, so don't even think of it.”

“All I want to do is check-”  
Something clicked in Susie's mind.

“Wait.”  
“What?”  
“Why is the boat broken? I thought you guys came right back after I passed out?”  
A long silence followed.

“I-It broke just as we landed, guess that old thing was on it's last legs, h-heh...”

“How did it break?”  
“I-I dunno it just kinda split in half or something, it's broken, okay? I-I don't want to talk about this anymore. Just stay where you are, I'm on the roof can see another storm coming on, and I doubt you wanna be stuck in the hallways in a lock down.”  
  


And like that, the radio cut out. Like hell she was staying in here, she was getting to the bottom of this, and no amount of halfhearted lies from Suze would change her mind. Speed walking out of the Suite with the small radio clipped to her coat, she walked into the hallways and to the elevator doors. Susie thought of the deformed version of Suze she'd seen on that island. She wondered if that was her true form, if the skin she wore was merely a disguise. But why reveal itself to her now? Why had Napstablook acted as if nothing was wrong? Did he not know? If he didn't, that meant she kept up this twisted facade for, if her word was to be believed, years. Either that, or Susie really was going off the deep end. She didn't let the thought phase her though. She just needed to make sure.

Susie stepped into the elevator doors and immediately hit the bottom most button. The steel, semi-reflective doors closed tight, and the elevator began to ascend. Ascend, and not descend. Susie instantly felt her stomach drop as the elevator kept rising. To the roof. To her. She felt her body tense up, and she readied every atom in her body for the worst. Susie had a feeling no matter what floor button she pressed, there was only one way to go. Something terrible was going to happen, and she was going to be at the very forefront of it. She only hoped that she could survive whatever event occurred next. She isn't sure if she would forgive herself if she died without seeing Hazel, Kris, or Toriel again. Without letting them know of the truth.  
  
The elevator's doors screeched opened forcibly, and Susie was greeted to the sight of Suze looking off toward the cube's direction. Her hair, unraveled from the constraints of her ponytail, now gently swayed in the wind just above shoulder level. A storm of dark violet thunderclouds brewed behind the cube itself that stretched infinitely to the left and right, and Susie cautiously walked out onto the rusted, brown roof. The elevator doors slammed shut behind her. Suze was doing this. She had to be. She felt it in the air, something electrical that didn't originate from the storm that was slowly making it's way towards them.  
  
The air smelt like burning blood.

“You didn't believe me. I knew you wouldn't, but... it hurts, you know? Even when you see it coming, it still hurts.” Suze slurred in a deadpan drawl. Her voice was a lot deeper than usual.

Susie said nothing as the doppelganger in front of her kept facing away.

“I knew as soon as we got to that island that I made a terrible error. It ended up hurting Napstablook, and you, too. It was too dangerous out there. The mistakes crave blood unlike theirs, and only out of sheer desperation will they feast upon one another. But the temptations never stop.”  
Susie heard her voice tremble a little.

“Knowing this, you should be able to infer that it's been incredibly hard for me to resist the urge to kill you. To feel alive again. To feel anything but dread and emptiness.”  
And with the crack of her voice on the line “emptiness”, the facade finally broke, and Suze's voice returned to the fragile, stuttering and young teenager her body matched.

“Th-This is why it hurts, Susie. The moment you showed up, the moment my eyes met yours, I knew you weren't sent here like me. You just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and here you are. Same with Bl-... N-Napstablook. But he's just a bunch of metal with a rotting soul inside, you... you're flesh, and blood, and life. And I-I wanted that life for myself. I wanted the life whatever made me robbed from me. I stared at you, wishing nothing more but to be in your place. You were just a better version of me. And I hated that.”

A familiar snapping noise resounded through the air as Suze jerked her head suddenly, still facing away from Susie. She was audibly speaking through tears now, and her body began to contort into a shape not unlike what Alphys had turned into. Stretched limbs, tall body, taut skin, claws.

“I could've been like you! You may not have had a real life but at least you had the illusion of one! You had the chance! I didn't get that! I'm just a little girl, and I never got anything! I never had friends or a family or a school, nothing! You know what I had?! I had a sea of death and misery that I've been stuck in for years! Stuck in a never aging, weak, fragile body!”

  
Susie opened her mouth to speak, and for the first few moments, no words came to her. However, after multiple tries, she gave up as the air escaped her body. Suze's shaking frame produced white, tattered wings from her spine that spanned across the entire length of the roof, somehow not damaging her clothes in the process. Suze turned around and faced Susie, glaring at her with eyes of pure and radiant white. Tears of this same luminosity cascaded down her cheeks and dripped off of her sharp toothed mouth.

“This is what I am, Susie. A mistake. And maybe that's what makes the most sense about all of this. Maybe, this is where I belong after all.”

Susie stood absolutely speechless at her true form. She had nothing to say. Nothing she could say could console Suze as she fell to her twisted hands and knees, sobbing and repeating the last sentence she spoke. Throughout all the pain and the suffering she saw before her, there was only one thing Susie could mutter out.

“I'm so, so sorry Suze.”

Then, something clicked. Something went off inside Suze's brain that completely halted her sobbing, and started a whole new series of fleshy, disturbing cracks and snaps as her body began to deform even more. When she looked back up to meet Susie's gaze, both of them froze. Suze's face had morphed into a grotesque perversion of her normal face, the left half of it being an unchanged, but frightened version of her regular face with nothing more than a white, glowing eye being changed. The right half, however, was the real nightmare. Her regular, rather small maw slowly morphed into a massive, tooth filled grin that stretched all the way back to her temples, each tooth being similar in length to her fingers. This alternate face's eye was a deep, dark red, frenzied with hatred and resentment. This incredibly abhorrent disfigurement would pale in comparison to what came after, however, as the frightened, leftmost face began to speak, almost individually, in a frightened, wailing voice.

“M-Mommy? Where are you? There's a-an... another one of me, mommy! Why are there two of me?! Why is there another one?! Mommy, please, there's another one, get rid of it, please!”

Suze's haunting shrieks for her none existent caregiver rang through the air as she slowly crawled on her hands and knees towards Susie. As her claws clamored on the rusted metal, her banshee-like lamenting got less tangible in sync with her movement getting faster and faster. Susie barely had time to dodge to the side as Suze closed the gap between where she once was and the elevator doors in a little under a second's time. Susie got to her feet just in time to witness Suze lose no speed whatsoever as she tore the entire top of the elevator shaft off of the roof, leaving a gaping, sparking hole in the roof where it once was. With a single flap of her tattered, broken wings, she managed to take flight, throwing the elevator's top far into the sea.

Susie struggled to get to her feet as the radio clipped to her coat crackled to life. The incredibly nervous voice of Napstablook rang through.  
“S-Susie?! Suze?! Anyone?! W-What was that?”  
This only seemed to anger what used to be Suze further, letting her wings stretch to her full span and diving claws first into where Susie was. In another near-catastrophe, Susie dodged to her side just in time to send Suze careening through the rusted barrier, breaking it with ease and sending sharpened pieces of rusted pipe flying. Susie quickly took this opportunity to arm herself, grabbing onto a bent piece of the barrier and tearing it off with ease. She didn't want to do this, she wanted to calm her down into a more serene state and tell her that everything was going to be okay. But she knew she was too far gone for that. One sentence from Susie was enough to put her in this state, who knows what damage she could do with another.

Another pained, sorrowful wail echoed through the air as Suze flew up into the air, preparing to dive bomb into the portion of the roof Susie was located on. Susie predicted this move far in advance however, and ran from the spot, leaving Suze to put a dent in the roof where Susie once was. Susie slowly backed away from Suze with her makeshift weapon in front of her, but she caught up to her with incredible speed, swiping wildly with both claws in ferocious and swift attacks. One of these attacks managed to put three sizable gashes through Susie's chest. Enough to draw blood, but enough for the adrenaline to drown out. Susie knew getting to the back or sides of her would be impossible, so she decided to take an incredibly risky chance. Susie dove headfirst onto Suze's face, using the pipe as a sort of short spear and taking another three slashes to the left side of her midsection in the process. The small, rusted metal failed to hit the forehead, however, where it did end up hitting was debatably even more painful.

In all of Suze's screaming, the pipe managed to pierce itself straight through the bottom jaw of her mouth, straight through her tongue and out through the bottom of her neck. Suze screeched again, pushing Susie off of her with the back of her hands, sending her into the railing and nearly breaking it. The rusted steel squealed as it bent to match Susie's form. Had she hit her just a little harder, she would've been sent over the edge and into the sea. Suze was on her back, now, desperately flailing and attempting to dislodge the spear that was currently blocking her mouth from closing. Her wings flailed weakly, as if she thought it would help her situation. Susie took this chance of momentary vulnerability to get up and begin breaking the barrier into another spear. This one gave her slightly more resistance, but it wasn't long before it loudly snapped, and she had another, slightly longer weapon to defend herself with.

Suze continued to cry out in pain, failing to grab at the spear in her jaw. She must have decided to simply move on despite the pain, because she got back on all fours and flew into the air once more. Predicting another dive bomb, Susie began running from her current position. However, Suze changed her flight trajectory last second, barely missing hitting the floor and instead gliding straight towards Susie. Her adrenaline could only go so far, so the reflexes to dodge this sudden change of plans simply weren't present. The best she could do was hold her pipe weapon in front of her horizontally, with both hands. Susie got tackled and pushed against the tough metal ground, and hearing the spark of disconnected wires behind her, she knew she was close to the hole Suze had ripped in the ceiling. She had little time to think, placing all the effort she could into her arms to keep Suze's face away from hers. Suze's agape jaw drooled a mixture of saliva and inky black blood onto her face. Certain death was mere inches from her face, and the tricks up her sleeve were all out. Susie was about to lose all hope until a familiar crackling noise met her ears.  
  
“Hello?! The storm's coming soon a-and the elevator isn't working, where are you guys?!”

  
For a split second, she saw Suze's eyes turn... normal. A normal, soft shade of yellow both Suze and Susie shared. And though it hurt her so very much to do so, she had to make this split second of a pure mind count. Using the remaining strength in her legs, she kicked Suze's lower body upwards, sending her body up and over Susie's head. When Suze had let go of her grip on Susie, and when she heard a sudden increase in electrical sparking, she knew it was done. Susie got to her feet shakily, and looked at the shaking and charred Suze. Her scales had turned black in most places, both of her eyes now turning a dull, dim gray color that no longer had any radiance within them. Her mouth was left agape, her pierced tongue sticking out and her throat gurgling in pure suffering. Susie felt the adrenaline in her body begin to drain, and with these last moments she had with working limbs, she dropped the spear she was holding, and lightly dug a finger into one of her gashes, pulling it out and leaving it dripping with her blood.

With no words to speak, she held the dripping fingertip above the pitiful creature before her, letting a couple generous drips of blood drop into Suze's mouth. Susie saw the eyes in her skull light up, if only for a brief moment, before both the gurgling and the shaking ceased. She could've sworn she heard her laugh a little, too. Turning away from the body of her doppelganger, she looked at the storm gathering on the horizon. In all the calamity, Susie neglected to notice it's presence. The clouds had completely obscured the vision of the cube, all that was left being a giant purple-black mass of churning lightning, thunder, and darkness. Then, Susie looked skyward. She saw an old familiar face above her. It's transcendent, pale blue gaze. The moon had returned, and it was so big in the sky, she swore she could almost reach out and touch it. Instead, it reached out and touched her. Susie felt an invisible fist clench around her body, in a surprisingly non hostile, almost lovingly way. She continued to look skyward in a daze as the moon got closer and closer to her.

Her vision blackened instantly when she felt the hand tighten it's grip faster than she could register the pain.

She was left in the dark once again, with not a single dream nor nightmare to keep her company.


	3. ACT 3: CHAPEL OF FLESH

Susie stood standing in an abyss of pure darkness. The pain she physically experienced from the encounter with Suze had vanished, even though the mental pain did not. And this pain was a heavy, unrelenting burden. She had just taken the life of a different version of herself. A different Susie that could have lived a good life, had circumstances been different. A different life. A living life. This was no monster nor alien creature. It had been, or at least at one point was, a living, breathing, speaking, laughing and smiling soul. She felt tears well up in her eyes as she fell to her knees and silently sobbed into her palms. Was there really anything she could've done? Did she even try? When she transformed, was the normal Susie still inside? Did she blame her for what she did? Susie felt her body shake. She sat on her knees in defeat and utter hopelessness. What ever horrid fate lie in wait in this abyssal hell, it was one she thought she deserved. Susie looked forward and saw the moon staring right back at her.

And then the screams started. The horrid, terrifying screams. The sounds of hundreds of vocal cords being strained in one cacophonous wail. But Susie did not scream, nor did she cover her ears. She let the screams enter her head and mind, and fill her skull with sound. She let her ears, eyes, and mouth bleed profusely. She let her body fall to the floor, convulsing in a pool of blood. She wished for a different life. One with less suffering, one with normalcy, one with happiness.

The last of her thoughts vanished as all she could think of or hear were the screams, and all she could see was the pale light of the moon. And then, something changed. Something shifted within the screams. A single voice among the crowd of howls turned from a scream to a single, constant singing tone. Susie laid static as more and more of the screams turned from horrific, painful yelling to beautiful, hope filled singing. Before long, the screams had turned to an angelic choir of sorts. Susie felt stricken with awe as the moon vanished from her view along with the voices, and she was left in the dark once again.  
  
Susie's consciousness began to return to her, first in fleeting feelings of cold, next in glimpses of dull, dark gray light, and finally to the feeling of a soft powder beneath her body. Susie's eyes weakly fluttered open to the sight of dead, rotting trees, barely lit from an unknown light source. Covering the ground around her was something she had assumed to be snow at first glance. Although it took much more strength than usual, she got to her knees, still facing the same direction. The frigid air owed nothing to the gray powder on the ground, as she soon found out. Grabbing a handful of it and squeezing it in her palm, she found that it left black stains on her hand and fingers.

Ash.  
  
Susie looked to her right and saw the aforementioned dim light that illuminated the land around her. It also happened to be, besides her of course, the only thing that wasn't a dark, gloomy gray. The dark orange sun barely peeked over the horizon, said horizon emanating a dull purple glow around the sun. She was only able to just barely see it's light without it getting blocked by piles of indistinct rubble far in the distance. She then looked to her left and saw a gigantic, perfectly round lake that stretched for dozens of miles across. The water's surface was perfectly still, not a ripple or disturbance to be seen. Across the lake laid a large, metal ruin that glowed a soft, dull orange. Beyond even that, was a tall mountain that had no snow on it's peak. Of course, all of this was the least deserving of Susie's attention. For above the lake hovered the moon, in all of it's radiant glory. It wasn't nearly as large as it was back in the sea, it even seemed smaller than it normally was. Everything about it seemed, if nothing else, ordinary.

That is, until it moved. The moon rotated to it's left and right incredibly fast, in no way suited for a celestial body of any sort. Susie quickly got to her feet and took a step or two back from the lake. She was about to brush it off to her slowly dwindling sanity when another, smaller moon appeared next to the first one. Then another. And another after that. It wasn't long before she had at least a dozen moons in the sky beaming down on her. They would flash out of existence for a split second out of sync with each other, almost as if they were blinking eyes. Susie immediately regretted making that connection after she realized that the moons weren't in the sky at all. This is why they were so small, they were only hovering about twenty feet above her, and about thirty into the middle of the lake.

Susie blinked, and the creature revealed itself.

The monstrous, dark red being towered at least thirty feet above Susie, even in it's current position which seemed to be half laying down, it's lower body hidden beneath the surface of the lake. It held it's upper body above the ground with two large, bony arms that rested to the creature's sides. Any skin that covered the creature was scarce, and most of it was covered in thick, dark hair that draped down from it's source. It's torso was skeletal and gaunt, organs of unknown function and make rested between it's ribs and what little skin and muscle it had left. The head was the most deformed and surreal part of it's body, being a strange, smooth oval shape that was made completely out of dark red, bloody flesh. Inside various vertical eye sockets were large eyes that had a striking resemblance to small moons, with pale bluish gray leaking out of every orifice that held one within it. It's head alone was about three times Susie's size.

The head of the massive abomination in front of her jerked to the side, as each of it's moon-eyes blinked with curiosity. Even without irises or pupils, she could tell the creature was examining her. Watching her every move. Susie stood frozen in fear. There was no way she was fast enough to out run it, nor strong enough to overpower it.

She could only stand and stare back, hoping that whatever it's intentions were wouldn't be the end of her.

The towering red monster lowered it's head to Susie's level as much as it could bear, it's gazing, inquisitive eyes blinking and rolling in their sockets. Susie could only stare back, both in fear and awe that she was even alive, that the mere sight of this creature hadn't broken her completely. However, she didn't sense hostility from the creature in front of her. She felt more of a dreadful, sinking feeling. As if simply existing in the presence of this thing made the world itself darker. Then, Susie felt a presence. It was this being, surely, but she felt it inside her head. Visions and concepts began flashing in her mind. One of the world in which they reside turning dark. Creatures from this dark clawing their way out, and into Hometown above. An entire world built on top of the decaying bodies of others, with every previous world gaining more and more hatred for the one at the highest tier.

Visions of the queen and king of this world appeared, begging tall, radiant humanoids to let their son, if anyone, survive. Their answer was yes, though the couple was not expecting their wish to be granted in such a cruel way. The following vision showed Napstablook's body embracing the lifeless, charred corpse of Suze. Napstablook did not move, nor speak. The soul had disappeared, leaving the rest of the sea of mistakes without conscious creatures. One last vision followed. Susie being dragged through a dark, red hallway, unconscious and in the grasp of something she could not visualize. Visions of Hometown being right above her flooded her mind, along with the lake to the east of the town, where she saw the red bodies rise to the surface.

The assault on her mind disappeared, as did most of the strength in Susie's body. She collapsed to the ash covered ground, with so many questions for the being in front of her. When she collapsed, she noticed that she could no longer feel the cold, or the ash beneath her body. She instead felt a warm, almost flesh like feeling beneath her. In fact, it seemed as though her only sense left unaltered was sight. Her ears, instead of being vacant of much sound at all, was filled with the rattling of chains and horrid screams of unseen creatures. She smelt rotting, decaying flesh, and a sensation of a coppery, blood-like taste infected her tongue. Her body and mind had simply faltered, and she was left staring at what remained of the sun on the horizon. Over the course of a minute or so, the light slowly faded from the world, the ash becoming more black than gray until the last flicker of light went out. A void surrounded her as her vision faded, but every other disturbing sense remained intact. A few minutes passed before Susie realized that the only thing keeping her vision dark were her own closed eyelids.

Once her eyes opened, she surveyed her current surroundings. She laid on a rusted metal bed frame that hugged the east side of a prison cell wall. The cell's bars, as well as every other surface she could see, was covered in a reddish pink fleshy array of pulsating skin that cascaded across the walls, floors and ceiling like overgrown vines. Much like vines, in fact, the skin even draped from the ceiling in places. The only reason she could see all of this is because of the skin itself, able to radiate a dull red light somehow. Besides the incredibly dirty and uncomfortable bed frame, Susie didn't spy any other furniture in her room. She got up and sat on the end of the bed, the pain from Suze's encounter finally catching back up with her. Her arms were incredibly heavy, her head ached with such ferocity it made it hard to keep upright, and her back shot bolts of pain through her body with every movement she dared to make.

Susie looked to her right, between the cell's bars, and across a narrow, similarly disgusting hallway into the cell across from hers. It was devoid of any furniture, or even living things as well. Though what she heard told her that she was far from alone. Pained and drawn out cries of beings she couldn't see rang out through the hall from the cells next to her that, on top of the searing headache, made it even more of a hassle to think. She could make out one individual in particular a couple cells over to her left. Whatever it was, it was making so much noise it was vibrating the bars of her cell. It was a sort of high pitched growl that almost hurt Susie's ear drums to listen to. Due to Susie being at the back of her cell, and due to the incredibly narrow hallway that looked as if it could only fit one person at a time, she could only see the cell directly across from her. Though judging from the events that transpired next, perhaps that was for the best.

Incredibly loud and heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath Susie, her reflexes telling her to get as far away from her cell door as she could. She scrambled to the back corner of her cell and huddled in the fetal position, without even thinking of how pathetic that seemed. The footsteps stopped in front of the cell that she supposed the loudest creature was in. She only heard the next events, but she had a good idea of what was happening. The sound of bending and snapping metal screeched as the sound of multiple metal objects hitting the fleshy walls reverberated nauseatingly. The screaming ceased when another sound of shattering bone and flesh met her ears. Then another barrage of the same noise repeated with incredible swiftness and force. This ended after a few short moments, followed by the sound of something being dragged across the floor, and the same heavy footsteps from before fading into the newly silent atmosphere. The other creatures in the vicinity had stopped their cries.

Susie tried her best to muffle her sobbing by burying her face into her arms. She was badly hurt, alone, and in constant fear of death. She had been brought to the brink of death so many times that it seemed like a cruel game. It's like the world itself was against her, waiting for just the right moment to deliver her end. And she was starting to believe that maybe this world truly was against her. What fair and just world would let any of this happen? This wasn't even the worst of her thoughts, however. Maybe the world being against her would be fair after all if she was given a chance to have an even fight. And maybe before all of this started, she believed she was on even ground with anything.   
  
But now, here she was. Alone in a prison full of obscured screaming aberrations that she didn't even know the location of, her body half broken and too scared to get out from the corner. As if she stood a chance against anything here. She missed the days where she felt strong. Feeling like she could take on anything. But she had come to find that she was so incomprehensibly small in comparison to these things that Susie was surprised she even thought that in the first place. Even if she made it back to Hometown, what would she even say? They would surely think she was insane, right?   
  
Perhaps she was. At least in the sea Susie had a rough idea of where she even was in relation to the rest of the world. But she could be under tens of miles of water or a few miles from Hometown. It didn't matter. She didn't know. She could be anywhere. She could be nowhere. Susie thought of Toriel, Hazel and Kris. Were they worried? Looking for her? Were they even alive still? She didn't know. She didn't know anything. She couldn't do anything. There was nothing to do, and no one to be.   
  
Susie felt her heart sink as she tried her best to muffle her sharp inhalations and sobs with her tattered and blood stained clothes, hoping that this was all a terrible nightmare that she would soon wake up from, but knowing that would be too nice of a thing for this world to grace her with.

  
Usually in a situation like this, Susie would fall asleep shortly after a breakdown. Whether this was a coping mechanism or a symptom of circumstance, it helped her calm down at the very least. She realized this the harshest when she couldn't fall back to it. For several hours Susie huddled in the back corner of this hellish prison cell, eyes bloodshot, face and ragged clothes stained with innumerable tears until there was nothing left to fall from her eyes. She was afraid to blink, as who knew what would creep upon her in such a vulnerable state? Certainly not her. With nothing left to do, she thought.

She thought about the visions that she was bombarded with by the moon creature in the old world. She remembered one particular one. She was being dragged through a red hallway by something she couldn't see. Then she was shown that Hometown was directly above this hallway. Could this really be the case? Was she really so close to being home, safe and sound? And what of the vision that came directly after, of the lake to the east of Hometown proper? What significance did it hold? No matter if these visions were correct or not, she thought she had to try. It was the very least she could do.

This train of thought was quickly derailed when Susie spotted a lurching figure come into her view. From behind the wall to the right side of the hallway came an incredibly tall humanoid figure, shrouded in a sort of dark fog that kept itself congealed enough to form the figure, but not enough to keep dark mist from falling from it's body and to the floor. It was so tall that Susie couldn't even see it's head, as it stretched into the hallway's ceiling that was far taller than that of the cell's that she resided in. The dark figure reached out a shadowy limb to the door, the arm ending not in a hand, rather tapering off into a slim, tentacle-like extension.

The shadow figure slowly opened the fleshy door to her cell. It wasn't even locked. Though maybe the addition of one wouldn't matter. If anyone was caught outside of their cells when they weren't let out by something else, she was sure there was a far worse fate awaiting for them outside their cell than in. Susie stood up slowly and cautiously, keeping her eyes both on the figure and the half opened door. The hallway was so cramped that the door could only open halfway before it collided with the other cell's bars. Susie wasn't sure if it was letting something in, or letting her out. A quick frantic tapping from the creature's other arm on the bars gave her the answer she wanted.

Susie, not used to walking at all and in no such condition to do so, stumbled her way outside her cell. In the hallway now, she could survey more of her surroundings, and more of the creature. The hallway actually stretched far upwards into an inky black abyss above, with a lot of tightly packed cells dozens of meters up. The cells above her didn't even have some sort of walkway or balcony, anyone in the top cells that would walk out would fall at least a couple meters to the floor. There may have been walkways up there at some point, but they were long gone now. In addition to her location, she saw the rest of the creature as well, though she never saw it's head after all. The neck of the creature simply extended far into the ceiling and into the abyss above until it became one with the darkness. Maybe that was for the better, as who knows what such a creature would have for a face. And perhaps the body was simply an extension of the darkness looming above the hallway? The less she knew, the less her mind was burdened.

The creature closed the door behind her, and pointed behind her, further down the hallway. Both ends of the passage ended in a flesh covered metal door. Susie was surprised any doors here worked at all, and hadn't been grown over by the flesh that pervades the area. Susie taking the hint from the shadow creature, she turned around, hoping that this thing's intentions weren't malicious, and began to walk in the opposite direction of the creature. She instantly noticed the cell a couple cells down from hers had it's bars completely removed, forcibly so, in fact. Bits of the barrier's remains mixed in with various unrecognizable bits of flesh and organ matter sat within a fresh pool of blood right outside of a cell mere steps away from her. The blood didn't stop at the pool either, and formed a small trail that ended halfway between the door at the end of the hallway and the blood pool. She knew this as the aftermath of the confrontation she heard just hours prior. The sight of all of this, mixed in with a pungent smell of death that hadn't quite hit her till now, nearly forced what little she had in her stomach out.

Thoughts of Hometown, Kris, Toriel and Hazel were the only things keeping her going. She tried her best to not breathe in any of the foul, stale air that permeated this place, and carefully stepped over the pool on her way to the end of the hallway. She could only be thankful she still had her shoes on, because if she stepped on whatever just made a sickly, wet crunch beneath her feet without them, she was sure the bile reaching the bottom of her throat would rise a lot higher. Only a few more cell's lengths away, and she would hopefully be far away from here. Susie tried to keep her eyes away from any of the cells in addition to her previous precautions. Even though all had been relatively quiet since the encounter that caused the mess, she had heard enough of their screams to know that whatever was inside was something left unseen. She could still hear muffled sobs and gasps occasionally, and that was more than enough to keep her gaze averted.

Susie made it to the door and with perhaps too much haste, swung it open and closed it behind her. The room in front of her was really only half of a hallway, with half of it being a pile of steel and metal rubble covered with flesh. Susie was about to wonder why the figure led her here in the first place when she noted the quite large hole in the left of the hall. Susie cautiously approached the opening in the wall which looked to be made with some sort of explosive. Inside the hole, she saw a few metal elevator cables dangling from a ceiling far above where she could see. Below, the shaft went far down, a couple miles at least, until at the very bottom she spotted a small blue square that was the exit.   
  
This was the elevator shaft that she fell down. If she had to guess, she was about at the halfway point between the sea of mistakes and however far up Hometown was. Which means she was somehow carried several miles vertically to the entrance of whatever this area was. For an unknown, and most likely sinister purpose, at that. Such a creature probably had great strength, and especially in this condition, she had no way of fighting back something like that. She also knew there was no way she could climb the elevator cables in the state she was in either. There had to be either another way up, or she had to find some way to reach the top of this elevator shaft and climb back up into her own world. Whichever possibility she went with, actually having even the vague concept of a plan of action gave her some much needed hope. The light at the end of the tunnel was in her grasp.

She only needed to figure out how to reach it.

Susie had to sit down for a moment, both to keep herself from falling into the elevator shaft due to a sudden lightheaded feeling, and to let everything she just saw sink in. She began to think of plans to ascend the shaft. If she were to regain her strength, and perhaps got some gloves to help grip the cables, she could climb up that way. That seemed incredibly risky, however, as any slip up could very well send her tumbling into the sea. Unlike last time, there was no one left to save her. She looked around the shaft cautiously, trying to look for any way whatever brought her here would've got here in the first place. She found nothing, leaving her with only two possibilities. Either whatever kidnapped her climbed all the way up the elevator shaft manually, or it flew. She wasn't sure if she preferred either possibility.

Regardless, there was no way for her to ascend it at the moment, so her only option was to head back to the prison cell hallway. She wanted anything but to be back there, but she had no other options at this point. Susie walked back to the door, wondering if the shadowy figure who let her out of her cell was on her side, or only following orders. Maybe there was no order here after all, and simply a food chain. Whatever had killed that prisoner a few hours back was surely near the top. She opened the door, and immediately felt a familiar sick feeling creep into her. The fleshy, almost crimson colored walls gave off an incredibly unwelcome feeling. She did not belong here, not in the slightest.

Susie made the same precautions as before. To keep her eyes ahead, away from the prison cells, and to try not to step in the puddle of remains and blood. The shadowy figure was gone, though the darkness at the top of the long hallway remained. With he figure no longer blocking her vision, however, she was able to see what rested at the other side of the hallway. The walls on the left and right expanded into a much wider area that had a large, bronze set of double doors with multiple etched markings on their surface. She stepped closer to the doors, ignoring the sparse breathing and yelling from the cells next to and above her.

She reached the wider, more spacious area, feeling the claustrophobic sense fade a little. Next, she began to examine the doors. The majority of their surface was covered in scratch marks of varying sizes, some creating nothing but faint white marks, while others leaving incredibly large gashes in the solid bronze colored metal. Susie hoped that whatever left those marks was something she wouldn't have to encounter. In the middle of the doors, near the top of the door frame, was an insignia of a moon. Susie was only barely able to make this out, because a large X drawn in old, dark red blood was stained upon the symbol, and it looked to have been scratched heavily. It seemed that the inhabitants of this place had the same resentment towards the moon that she did.

The fear of what could be in wait on the other side of this door was outweighed by her determination to get out Susie placed her hands upon the cold metal of the door, and pushed them open. The piercing metal squealing that followed caused her to squint a little, looking through the ever increasing crack between the doors before realizing that a tall figure was sprinting towards her. Susie immediately covered her face with her arms in a weak attempt to protect herself, stopping the squealing in the process. When Susie felt nothing attack her, she lowered her arms a bit to see what the figure actually was that sprinted towards her.

A tall, almost skeletal half silhouette stood at the doorway. It was at least twice Susie's size, reaching nearly to the top of the door frame. It's head took the shape of a bird skull, the beak of said skull being a dark brown while the rest of it's head, much like the rest of it's body, was a pale white. It's torso wore the weathered remains of what looked like a white shirt, now stained with various shades of red, coupled with a horribly ripped up and unfitting gray undershirt. It's legs were, fittingly, bird-like in nature, it's talons being a brown shade, not unlike it's beak. What got Susie the most was it's eyes, however. They were a pale, radiant white with small darker spots littered randomly along their surface, striking quite the resemblance to the moon-like eyes of the decaying red creature from the ash world.

Once the metal squealing had stopped, so had the bird thing's sprint. It cocked it's head to the side, it's entire body shaking for a bit before it turned around, returning to the room and whatever business it had been partaking in before. Susie cautiously stepped inside, and observed her surroundings. The room was large, so large in fact that her footsteps echoed across it. The shape was circular, and to her left and right were two large brass doors identical to the one she just opened. The smell of this room caught her off guard, though it wasn't incredibly strong, the stench of death and decay was as present as ever. The eye catcher, along the source of the smell, was in the middle of the room. Behind the bird creature was a large, circular marble fountain, nearly filled to the brim with a red substance Susie had assumed to be blood. Around the outer perimeter of the fountain were body parts of various shapes and sizes, rotting and stewing in the pool. From the pool creeped the glowing flesh that Susie had seen around the area, sticking to the outside of the pool and spreading out to every part of the building. It seemed that she found the source of the living flesh.

In the middle of the fountain was a statue made out of various parts of flesh and bone, amalgamating into a huge, horrid humanoid skeleton with six arms. In place of a head was a gray moon made out of stone, split in half down the middle and being held in place by one set the skeleton's hands. The moon sculpture leaked blood, which fell down the skeleton's body and back into the pool below. How the blood made it back up to the moon was unknown to Susie. Another set of arms was held up to the sky, as if it was to catch something in it's hands, or perhaps in some sort of prayer. The last set of hands were pointed downward and to it's front, cupping it's hands together as if it was offering something. The entire twisted structure was lit by a dim orange light in the ceiling that came through a box shaped hole. When she got closer to the fountain, and thus closer to the hole in the ceiling, she looked upward. There was a room up there, lit up by lights that she couldn't see. What she heard next immediately made her mind go into overdrive, thinking of the horrifici li implications and possibilities of escape the revelation had gave her.

The low pitched, distorted singer droned on.

“Never forget-  
Never forget-

Never forget-   
Never forget-  
Never forget-”  
  
...And she never did.

A wave of shivers shot through Susie's body from the realizations she had. A prison of horrid monstrosities. a fountain of disgust, and who knows what else laid just below the house she had been taking residence in for years. She never heard a single trace of anything, smelled the disease and rot, or felt the hollow space underneath the floorboards. Yet, here it was. A nightmarish realm just underneath the house she felt so safe inside. Was this the reason she was at the epicenter of all the strange activity? Was her house secretly the ground zero for the horrid deeds the moon creatures partook in?   
  
The next thought that crossed her mind was what she actually saw when she explored the hidden basement in her house. The pit she thought led to a void was the one she saw above her. And at the far end of that room... The barred up door. Even if she found the other side of that door, it was bolted shut from the other side with a steel beam. Even if Susie regained her strength, she didn't have much faith that she could break down that door. This left her with the only other option being climbing up through the hole in the ceiling, which was far less convenient than simply climbing up the elevator shaft.

One of the last thoughts she had was how none of this made any physical sense. The door she found south of hometown and Susie's house was a fair distance apart, far more than one hallway and half a room away. Maybe she was passing through some sort of dimensional doorway, or some sort of alternate reality where the distance traveled inside is far more than the distance traveled in the normal world. This thought seemed unimportant at first, but she realized that if the fabric of time and space itself could be changed by whatever was in charge of this place, that practically anything was possible within its mile wide steel walls. Anything she knew could very well be a fabrication.

Susie decided that more time thinking was less time acting, and that if she were to get out of here, she needed to get out as soon as she could. She immediately walked to the left of the room, heading to another set of brass double doors. Almost immediately after doing so, she felt a strange, stinging sensation on the back of her head. And then, immediately, she felt drowsy. “What the hell?” Susie thought as she fell on her hands and knees. As her palms connected on the flesh ridden, pulsating floor, she heard the radio from upstairs change from a distorted voice to an eardrum piercing, high pitched electrical screech. She caught a glimpse of the bird creature physically recoiling in agony, falling to its back and writhing for a few seconds before hurriedly scrambling to its feet and sprinting out of the room. Even though she witnessed this, she saw nothing that could've been the cause of her sudden onset of sleepiness. Susie felt her strength falter even more severely, and she rolled over onto her back, her body laid out in a star position.

Susie's vision split and faded multiple times, and there was not an atom in her body that could force itself to move. She could only look at the ceiling. The square hole at the top of the room was still letting in a good amount of light, and without this light she may not have noticed the long, red, tendril-like arm above her. It had something white and reflective on the end, and it seemed to be retracting into a part of the ceiling shrouded by darkness. It slowly lifted itself into the inky black above, and just before her consciousness returned, she felt her body being dragged across the floor, towards the door she was heading to originally. The thing that was dragging her remained unseen.

The next thing Susie felt is the constriction of leather around her wrists, ankles, and neck. Her eyes shot open as soon as the first bit of consciousness dripped into her skull. She moved her head around as best she could, but there wasn't much to survey in her surroundings. A small, dim light hung from a black cord directly above her, but it only illuminated the area around her, about a foot in every direction. She could only barely see the floor below her, its appearance being similar to the rest of the area. She seemed to be strapped to a metal table or flat surface of some sort that was tilted on its side, more vertical than not. Besides the small area in the light's embrace, she could barely see a thing. That is, except for an incredibly dim light she saw at the end of the room. It was very thin, so thin that it took her eyes adjusting to the darkness to be able to see it, and it ran vertically up the wall for a bit. Her depth perception being less than optimal, she couldn't tell just how far the light went up the wall, but she suspected this as light leaking in between the closed brass doors. She could only assume that she was on the other side of the door she had been walking to.

Susie then noticed a key part of her surroundings that she had failed to notice before. Her depth perception wasn't perfect of course, but she was pretty sure that if it was, in fact, light coming through the door, that it wouldn't abruptly cut off around the middle of her vision. She was also pretty sure that she should be able to see a little bit of the floor just in front of the door if it had went down all the way. But she didn't. This meant that something was blocking the light. Something directly in front of her, a couple meters away at most. Then, a pair of lights appeared, flickering on and pointing directly at Susie. As much as they resembled eyes in a basic sense, they were far from natural, and nothing like the white glowing eyes some of the creatures she's encountered had. They almost seemed like car headlights, and were so bright that it temporarily blinded Susie. With no arms to shield herself from the light, she could only squint and make out what little she could. What she saw was the last thing she expected.

There was a short, human figure sitting on a chair directly in front of her. However, this thing was anything but human. It seemed to be made out of a mixture of flesh, wires and electrical devices she didn't recognize or could put a name to. The amalgamation of red, natural muscle and bone mixed with the constructed nature of everything else left Susie in complete confusion and disgust. This wasn't even the strangest part, however. The thing got out of its chair, not by sitting up, but by being lifted, hoisted up by wires that ascended into darkness. These wires were placed at each major joint and limb of its body, while a large, messy and tangled mess of cords and wires extended from its back and continued above. It moved, or more so hovered a bit closer towards Susie in a puppet-like fashion. before its lights dimmed to a level where she could see in front of her without being blinded. With this, she could see its face. “Face” being an overstatement. Flesh and electronics, just like the rest of it, except for two large vehicle headlights acting as eyes, and where one's mouth would be, a small black speaker.

Susie could no longer hold her tongue. She knew she was in no position to make threats, and though it hurt her self worth to do so, she could think of no other choice but to plead.

“Let me go. Please.”

The speaker, though crackly and low quality, emitted a voice. A male, soft spoken yet stern voice.

“Hello Moonchild. We have lots of work to do.”  
“Moonchild?”  
“One gifted individual, attuned to the moon and her ever-radiant vision. You've been chosen. What a shame that is for you.”  
“I have no idea what you're talking about, alright? I just want to get back home, I don't care if I'm some chosen one, I have to get back to my friends.”  
“Above, are they? Not while you're down here, not while you have the gift. Poor choice of wording 'chosen' is. You give yourself too much credit. At worst, you were chosen at random. At best, you were chosen out of a lack for any other options. Do not take your gift as anything more than a stroke of luck.”

“If I'm so unimportant then, why don't you let me go?”  
“You can be useful. I can be too, as long as you comply. You will see your acquaintances again as long as you do what I ask. If that is your one goal, however, it would seem that's your only choice.”  
“And if I try to leave without doing that?”  
“Your life ends. I gather what little knowledge I can from your brain, and I wait for another to come. If self preservation is a goal, your choice is simple. However, if you knew all I did, you would know it is in your best interest to listen to me.”

Susie sighed in defeat.  
“...What do you want then?”  
  
The puppet figure slouched as the rustling of metal and flesh echoed, bringing its grotesque head closer to Susie's.

“There are many here that wish to leave this cursed place. Not only in our chapel of flesh and blood, but below, in the sea, and deeper below that. At the current time, escape is impossible. Not only are we unable to enter the realm above us, but any in the sea, or otherwise, are unable to enter the hanging cells that bind us. No matter the power these being hold. There is something within the core of this planet that keeps us here. Something left behind by the ones above as an effort to keep their experiments as clean and sterile as possible. Something screams from below the surface if we ever get too close to an area they deem off limits. A petrifying scream that keeps us locked to our respective areas. Many of us, being results of these experiments, feel the will to end them, and stop their conductors. The will to end the cycle of suffering. To break free.”  
  


“And you think me going to the core of the planet and destroying whatever is there will end it? What makes me so special that I can't hear by these so called screams?”

“You're one of the few original creations of their make, and your kind seems to be able to wander freely. Their methods of testing are incredibly barbaric, taking entire societies from their original locations and locking them within cubes for testing. The goal of these tests are unknown, and from what I understand, none of them have shown any sign of success. A very small amount of their tests seem to have been dedicated to creating original worlds, entities and such. You seem to have been one of them, and the most successful one yet, it seems. But that's neither here nor there. If you wish to see your allies, do what must be done at the core of this planet. You'll know when it happens.”  
  
“How do I know you and the rest won't just slaughter all of my friends?”

“Your friends, the subjects, are the least of our concerns. We hold no hate for them, only the conductors of the tests. Besides, even if I wished to leave this place, I cannot. As you can tell, I am very much a part of the chapel. Our hearts beat as one. If I were to disconnect myself, I would no longer live. It's with this knowledge that you know that my desires are not ones of selfishness. I wish for the cycle to end. That is all.”

“Why do you keep calling it a chapel?”  
“At one point, judging by the engravings and sculptures, this was truly a place of reverence for the moon, and the ones above as well. Of course, the ones who constructed this place had the opposite opinion of us. We did not destroy their structures, only defiled. Leaving a reminder of our hatred for them is the only thing that keeps us sane.”  
“You call any of the things here 'sane'?”

“It gets much worse than here. When a world is abandoned, it's denizens are not usually wiped out first, and instead sent to the sea to rot. If they are not brought here by one of my own, and fail to keep the hate of their creators in their hearts, they... change. A test subject without a test loses it's purpose. A mistake is born. It takes a long time, but they eventually become nothing close to their past selves, their minds going blank, and their bodies changing and morphing. Regardless of whether or not she was created by them, or merely stolen from another realm. You have met... 'her' before, yes? The one who despises the whirs of electricity and machinery. She is one of the oldest, and most powerful ones. Ascended beyond mere rage for the ones above, and evolving physically to a point where she is unrecognizable in comparison to her original form. She's been there for... I'm actually not sure how long. Far beyond my time, and far beyond yours. Wandering. Waiting. Striking at anything she deems worth destroying. She alone has the pure strength to stop the cycle, yet even she is halted by the core. And of course, you are the only one that can change this.”

“How do you know all of this?”  
“My memories are a haze, but I am fairly sure I used to be one of the moon beings. I have knowledge of things that I simply should not, and one of my first memories was my emaciated form falling from the sky, and into the sea of mistakes. I must have made a terrible error for them to discard one of their own in such a way. This is coupled with the fact that I can see through all of the ones I control, and my... quite extensive time living within these walls. The time for my full story is not now, perhaps once the cycle is broken and this nightmare is over.”  
“... I'm not putting my life on the line for something that doesn't work.”  
“I would not take such risks without the proper amount of confidence.”

Susie thought about this for quite a while. Even though she had no other options, she had a lot to think about. What horrors could lurk beneath the sea? How would she even get to the core? Could she handle the dangers, even with the help from this puppet? And is he to be trusted at all? Again, a staggering lack of options left her with no other choice. The thing that scared her the most, however, was the fear that she could end up like that massive, god like creature in the sea of mistakes if she lost any resemblance of a goal or hatred for something. She had flashbacks to Suze, and how her terrible fate is one she very much did not want to mimic. She was sure she had plenty of time before it got as bad as either of those, but she did not want to take any chances.

“If you think this will make things better in the long run, and stop these tests, then I'll do it. But I can't do it alone, I'm incredibly weak from a fight a while ago, and I have no weapons.”  
“I will do what I can to mend your injuries and arm you properly. All you have to do is make sure my efforts do not go to waste.”

“Looks like we're both at a lack for better options at this point.”  
“... That may be so.”

The two stood silently for a moment before out of the corner of Susie's eyes, she saw two tendrils like the one she saw that drugged her descend from the ceiling, somehow cutting the leather that kept her in place. She slumped to the ground, but after a moment stood back up. The puppet creature was only two thirds of her height, but seeing the terrible state his body was in, it made sense. Susie looked into the dull light of his eyes, unsure of what to do or say. Luckily, the puppet broke the silence for her.

“Are we ready for preparations? I sense the time we have to waste dwindling.”

Flashes of Hazel and Toriel's smiling, welcoming faces, Kris's embrace, and everyone in Hometown's gracious smiles went through her mind. She found a newfound hope. A reason to fight. There was a light, and for the first time in a while, a genuine smile etched it's way across her face.

  
“Yeah. Let's end this nightmare.”

The preparation was short lived, but fruitful. For her wounds and general weak body at the time, the puppet, who only wanted to be referred to as such, offered healing. There was one stipulation, however. He refused to “operate on conscious patients”. He wouldn't explain why, but reassured her that she would be safe. As off putting as it originally sounded to Susie, she reluctantly accepted, and was quickly put to sleep. Just like last time, a tendril stealthily administered a dose of, according to him, non lethal poison into her bloodstream. She passed out within seconds.   
  
When she woke up next time, she was on a different metal table, one surrounded by smaller tables with various medical tools strewn about their respective surfaces. Sitting up on the table, Susie felt a strength within her that she either never had or, after not having it for so long, forgot about. Her veins pumped with liquid determination, and she felt the effects almost instantly. There weren't even any stitches. She questioned the puppet's methods, if they were safe and if the tools he used were sterile. He assured her yet again that his methods were safe, and so was she. She didn't feel any different, so she believed him.

The next plan of action was to get Susie into the sea safely. All the work that had been put into her revitalization would be wasted by simply jumping down the elevator shaft. However, in her unconscious state, a makeshift elevator was made by unseen creatures in the puppet's control, crafted from flesh and rusted iron. The cable was made from flesh that ran through a pulley system. One end ascended into the darkness of the prison hallway, where the operators stayed hidden. The other ended in the elevator shaft, with the cable splitting off into four smaller ones that attached to each corner of the roof of the elevator. The elevator itself was an incredibly small steel cage, only enough to fit Susie and maybe one other person. It was built in such a way that minimal electronics were used, to deter “her” from interfering.

Susie reluctantly stepped into the cage, closing the door behind her. Inside was a brown backpack that the puppet had prepared for her. He never elaborated She then sat with her knees pressed up against her chest. A static sound arose from her coat. Susie was confused for a moment before she realized that she still had the walkie talkie. Somehow, through all the commotion, it hadn't fallen out or gotten lost. She fumbled around in her coat pocket before holding it in front of her. The puppet's voice came through, although crackly.

“You hearing this?”  
“Yeah, I actually forgot I had this thing.”  
“Is it waterproof?”  
“Don't think so.”  
“When you're lowered to the sea's surface, put it in the bag. It's waterproof. You'll find other things in there that are essential for your survival.”  
  


The elevator slowly began it's shaky descent, fleshy squelches and metallic squeaks sounding as it descended to the sea. This method was much slower than a conventional elevator, but a bit more waiting was much preferred over being blasted away by beings old beyond comprehension. Susie let her head fall back against the vertical bars that lined the cage, then spoke into the receiver.

“So, you've been pretty vague about our plan. You wanna explain what I'm doing here?”  
“Yes. How the sea works is that mistakes from tests are dropped into it, then slowly degrade until nothing but ash is left. This ash sinks below the surface of the water, then deeper below, until the core, or whatever rests there, devours it. Think of it as an hourglass which never empties, nor overflows. You're going to find the middle of the hourglass, where the sand drops deeper, and find the bottom.”  
“Do you think that the hourglass will over flow if the core is destroyed?”  
“Perhaps. But a better future in the long term is worth the suffering it may cause.”  
“You really believe that?”  
“Yes. Do you not?”  
“... I'm not sure. I haven't thought about it much.”  
“Maybe it's time you do.”  
  


A long, awkward silence filled the air before a thought came to Susie's mind.

“Wait, so how am I going to get to the bottom of this place without drowning?”  
“Inside that backpack are various tools that should help with traversing the bottom of the sea, including weighted boots and a custom made rebreather. It's appearance may be shocking at first, but it works indefinitely, and is crucial to your success in this task. There is also a high powered waterproof flashlight, plenty of rope with a weight attached to both ends, and a few other... curiosities that I will explain the use of later. Just make sure the radio is inside the backpack and the rope, flashlight, and everything else is outside of it before descending, since you won't be able to access it underwater without ruining some of the equipment inside.”  
  


“Alright. Understood, I guess. I really hope this works.”  
“You are a valuable asset. I would not let you go to waste.”  
Susie scoffed.

“'A valuable asset'. Charming.” She replied, rolling her eyes.

“I'm not here to be your friend, Moonchild. I am here to make sure a task is completed, and to assist you in completing it.”  
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. The world is on my shoulders, and all that. My name is Susie, by the way.”  
“You seem unwilling to save this world, and the allies you claim to be so dearly antiquated with. Or, at the very least, you seem to do so out of obligation. Are you forgetting that you will see them again if you succeed?”  
“Of course I care about seeing them again. But all this information is burying me alive, I feel like I can't breathe without having some sort of weight there. I used to be directionless, lost, without a purpose or any kind of hope. Now I have all of that, all at once. It's a lot to think about.”

No reply came from the radio. Susie looked forward to see the dark elevator shaft around her disappear, replaced by an endless blue sea. The elevator came to a stop, its bottom touching the water's surface, causing small waves to form around her.

“Looks like my ride's over.”  
“Contact me once you've found dry land down there.”  
“Yeah.”  
“And, Moonchild?”  
“Yeah?”  
“... Good luck.”

Susie didn't respond.

What was there left to say? She had a job to do.

Without a second to waste, Susie began to inspect the brown backpack in the elevator that was placed there. She was a bit hesitant to begin ruffling through it, as some of the descriptions of the items inside rang alarm bells in her head, but what other options or help did she have? If she wanted to help in any way, she would most likely need what is inside. The bag seemed to be filled to the brim, as if it was fighting to keep it's contents inside. This was somewhat confirmed when Susie struggled a bit to get the zipper open, thinking it would give way much easier. When it finally gave in the fight, the front of the pack spilled open, breaking the zipper entirely. She began to sort and look at each item individually, as best she could.   
  
First, she saw the rebreather that had been described as “shocking”, and while she didn't quite reel back in fear, it did catch her off guard and unnerve her. The shape resembled that of a gas mask rather than a rebreather, but she assumed the purpose was for water breathing as the puppet had said. The front was mostly a mass of pink, pulsating flesh that seemed to breathe all on its own. Near the top were two black, hollow, cylindrical shapes which poked out of the flesh, as if it grew around the shape. Susie assumed these were made to see out of. Inside of each shape was a slightly grimy, but transparent yellow lens. Below that was a triangular shape which had small white filters inside. Red veins poked in and out of the hole that pumped strange liquids into the flesh.

Inspecting the back of the mask, Susie found that its insides seemed to be untouched by the flesh on the front, and resembled what she imagined the back of a normal gas mask would look like. A simple gray interior with two eye holes and a triangular filter of some kind near where her mouth would be. The mask was rather flat, however, which brought upon the question of how her snout would fit inside effectively. Deciding the only way to know for sure was to try it for herself, she brought the back of the mask closer to her face. She felt a strange force gravitate the device closer to her face, as well as her own will to do so. Then, black slick tendrils erupted from the grated surface on the back of the mask, and forcibly made their way into her mouth and down into her esophagus, then into her nostrils. This sudden invasion of her body immediately shocked her backwards, then she fell to her knees and put her hands to her throat as the mask fit itself snugly to her snouted face, as if it had become a part of her.

For some reason, though, she didn't feel as if she was choking. In fact, she felt as if she could breathe more cleanly than she had in a long time. The stuffy air of the sea and ash turned into a clear, clean air that she hadn't experienced in a very long time. She felt as if she could run for miles with this new, fresh energy that had entered her. Then, she noticed she had closed her eyes on some sort of instinct when the mask fused itself to her face. Susie let her eyes flutter open. Her sight hadn't changed much, strangely, besides a barely noticeable grainy static that overlaid her vision and a slight yellow tint. She let her hands fall from her throat, and instead raised one in front of her face. The hand lit up in a dull orange-yellow tint, and created a shadow on the bars of the elevator in front of her. At least she knew that if the flashlight the puppet included in the bag gave out, she had the mask.

The strangely intimate method of the mask's function gave her the urge to radio up to the puppet and give him a piece of her mind, but she resisted the urge to do. As long as it worked, didn't set off “her”, and didn't seem to cause any significant harm to Susie, the abilities it could give her were worth it. Next, she peered into the bag again and found a large cylindrical industrial flashlight with a small handle on the top. Below the handle was a switch and a small black turn dial. Grasping it by the handle with one hand and inspecting the controls with the other, she turned the device on. The light produced a flickering trail of white across its surface, and seemed quite potent. Playing around with the dial, she found that turning it counter clockwise dimmed the light while turning it clockwise made it more powerful, while also increasing the length the light shone at. She turned it off, and set it aside.

Next, she found a pair of boots near the bottom of the bag. Their appearance and general theme matched the mask, with the bottom of the boots caked in flesh and veins, while the inside and legs of them were normal looking, gray and seemed to be relatively safe. She had a bit of fear in her body when she took off her shoes and began to dip her feet into the depths of the boot, but when she let them drop into the rest of them, she found that they felt normal. Nothing body defiling or otherwise strange happened. She felt relieved, but was also confused for a second. The footwear seemed on the lighter side, while the puppet had said that they had been weighted. Testing the waters in both senses, she sat with her knees to her chest at the edge of the water and let a foot into the water. The weight changed to about twice as heavy as it was normally, as if the water had far more of a pull on her than it should've. She had thought that the weighted nature of the boots would only show underwater, this way she wouldn't have to sacrifice her movement speed on land. With her theory proven, she pulled her foot out of the water and began to sort through the bag some more.

There was less of interest left inside that seemed to be useful. A decently thick rope covered the entire bottom of the bag, which she pulled out of the bag and tied one end firmly to one of the bars of the elevator. Susie noticed that on the end she hadn't tied was a heavy, spherical metal weight. Assuming this was the end that was made to drop into the water, she promptly dropped the weighted end into the sea, making for sure that her foot wouldn't get caught in it and having all of the rope out of the bag. She watched as the rope descended. The amount of rope wasn't to be understated, which made the length of it's descent into the water a bit unnerving. Susie began counting at around ten seconds after the drop, and hadn't stopped until the rope was taut. Susie counted about three and a half minutes of the weight's descent before the rope's slack disappeared. Every inch had been used. This meant that either the rope was the perfect length from the elevator to the sea floor and had collided with the ground below... or it hadn't even reached the bottom.

In either case, the distance between each end of the rope was incredibly long, so she decided to look at any other things she may have missed in the backpack. There was a curious, rusty, purple tinted lantern left inside. She attempted to turn it on, but for some reason it refused to work. Susie assumed this would be useful somehow along her journey, otherwise there would be no purpose for it's presence among the other tools. Beside the lantern was a strange, long knife. The handle was short, and made out of a sort of white bone material, while the hilt was a bulbous mass of purple flesh. She was noticing a distinct theme of flesh and blood with these tools, which she supposed made sense considering their likely origin. The blade was about as long as Susie's forearm, made of a material similar, in both texture and appearance, to stone. This seemed to be the most normal part of the weapon, even though the blade looked incredibly dull. The last items she found were a pair of completely normal black diving gloves, which she equipped shortly after her discovery.

With the rest of the backpack unpacked, Susie, after nearly forgetting about the radio, dropped it into the bag before she began her descent. She picked up the backpack and let the straps wrap around her shoulders. She had hoped that the pack was waterproof as the puppet had said.

“This is it”, she thought silently as she grabbed a hold of the rope in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Sitting on the edge of the water with her feet underneath, she took a deep breath and dropped into the depths below.

Susie felt the chilled water rush across her body, though only across any exposed part of her that wasn't covered up by a piece of flesh equipment. The rebreather worked wonders, and she was able to breathe as if she was above air. She stayed in dim blue light of the strange glittery substance that floated just below the surface of the water above. Her hand was tightly gripped around the rope, a subconscious fear racking her body that she would be lost in this place. Every natural instinct in her body told her that this was wrong. That she needed to get out of this water. That she didn't belong. And yet, she let her grip on the rope loosen, and fell deeper into the water.

At minute one of falling, the light from the blue substance above gave out.   
  
No natural, man made or other wise structures were within her vision. In fact, there weren't even any creatures to speak of that roamed the waters that surrounded her. The water felt still, and Susie felt like a trespasser that was soiling a long forgotten and ancient place. She then realized that this was likely exactly what she was doing. What else would be down here, besides the monstrous, shock wave creating creature? Susie looked around with her mask and large flashlight, but that only illuminated sparse dust particles that floated around her. Everything else that failed to be touched by the light was a pure, inky darkness. Susie had never seen a black so dark.

At minute two, she felt the anxiety start to creep into her veins.

Nothing. Not a soul, not a sound, not a single solitary sign of life crept from the darkness. The only sounds she could hear was the faint rumbling of blood flowing inside her head. The only indication that she was still alive at all, and not simply a lost soul in an endless abyss. When Susie turned around while still falling, she gasped and nearly let go of the rope. A large, white object nearly filled her entire vision. Susie rose her feet up and nearly kicked the thing when she realized it wasn't moving. Using one hand to scuttle a little bit further up the rope, and turning the light's focus onto it, she found out what it was that scared her so badly. A sharp, barbed tooth. Nearly twice the size of Susie's body. Its shape looked more like a claw than anything that resembled something that could come from a creature's mouth, but the bottom of it had strange prongs attached to it that didn't look like the end of any claw. The other side tapered off into a disturbingly sharp pointed end. She had only hoped that the tooth had been attached to something long gone by now. Susie crept down the rope once more, a bit slower and with more caution than before.

At minute four and a half, she found the end of the rope.

Susie saw no other body parts or bones on her way down, and though she was incredibly thankful for that, her stomach dropped when she found the end of the rope, and the steel ball attached to it. Susie turned the flashlight to it's brightest setting and pointed it directly downwards. Nothing. Nothing in any direction but a black abyss of endless water, waiting for the moment she dropped into it's maw so it could swallow her whole. Perhaps she was already in it's jaws, and she had been trapped here the moment the blue light faded from her sight. This was the end of the line. There was nothing left but to drop, even further below. With no other options left, she let her iron grasp on the rope falter, and she dropped deeper into the darkness, losing what little maneuverability she once had, and being at the complete mercy of the abyss, and whatever creatures lied in wait for her.

At minute nine, she felt ash beneath her feet.

  
A small cloud of gray dust expanded from the spot where Susie had landed, clouding her vision slightly before the disheveled ash floated gently to the sea floor. Susie felt a little at ease, finally out of the near eternal descent into darkness, and planted on some solid ground. This ground, however, perplexed Susie somewhat, for when she landed, she heard a muffled, metallic sound. Susie bent one knee and brushed away the ash. It took a bit of excavation work, but she eventually reached the surface below the ash. Steel. Perfectly flat, grayish steel. She didn't think much of it for a second, but when she thought of a terrifying possibility, she knew she needed answers. A firm grip still planted on the large flashlight, she flicked the switch to help her vision, and turned the power to it's maximum brightness. She surveyed her surroundings, and her suspicions were realized.

The light was incredibly powerful underwater, much more powerful than she was suspecting. Perhaps the flesh gave this thing more anomalous powers, but it allowed her to see for an incredible distance. Such a great distance, in fact, that she could just barely make out the mile or so that surrounded her. Vague, box shaped structures were littered across the landscape, some larger and smaller than others, but all keeping a cube-like shape. There were dozens of them, some that were so small she could easily mistake them for pebbles, some so massive that they towered over her. Steel boxes. Test chambers, just like the one she came from. There could be hundreds in this area alone, never mind the rest of the sea.

She knew now, that the real “failures” that populated this place weren't just above, visible to the naked eye. Who knew how deep they went, as well? The puppet said that she had to go to the core of the planet, what was buried underneath? How deep did the planet go? Susie felt her blood boil. The endless suffering these devices once caused, just to be thrown away and started anew. What could the things behind this be testing, she thought? Surely it wasn't worth it. In any case, if she wanted to stop this terrible deed from being done again, she would need to do as the puppet asked anyway. She had no choice but to trust him. The landscape around her dipped down a little towards one side, as if she was on the side of a hill. Susie began descending.

Her metallic footsteps, though muffled, made enough noise to echo as she walked. It was dead silent otherwise, Not a single thing, living or dead, spurred to life. Only the occasional sight of incredibly large bones kept her company. Anything from nondescript white fragments to full ribs, teeth and claws, floated around her, some buried firmly in the ash. She descended, and didn't count the minutes this time. How she was supposed to find her way back was less of an issue to her, as she knew how to swim rather well, and at any point she could have simply swam to the surface by detaching her boots. Still, the sinking feeling of something lurking in the darkness crept over her skin like a spreading disease, getting more and more rampant until she noticed a dark, red light in front of her.

Susie followed the light until she reached what she assumed was the bottom of the hill, realizing that the landscape resembled a crater much more. The light was slightly obscured by ash, but as she cleared it and it's surroundings, she found a large, circular door unlike any she had seen before. It was built into the metal she stood upon, with only a handle in it's middle to hint at how to use it. Assuming that this would lead her to the core, she firmly gripped the handle and pulled. When the handle refused to move, she turned it clockwise, then counter clockwise. The third action worked, as the handle turned forty five degrees. The handle retracted into it's frame, the door splitting open at such a speed that Susie gasped a little. She fell through the door, colliding with the water below shortly after. She only fell about six feet down, but it was enough to give a shock to her system. She got as upright as she could, finding the water's surface relatively quickly and poking her head above.

She was in a short, vertical metal corridor that was made out of the same steel as the other cubes. The walls were featureless and flat, besides the flashing red lights that were posed on each side of each door at both ends of the room. The one she fell in through shut almost immediately after she entered. The lights sort of disoriented her, and the entire event went by in a flash of red flashes and confusion before the door below her opened as well. Thankfully, she was standing on the edge of the door's frame, so she didn't fall straight through this time. The water, however, did. Once it had drained out of the room, a gray light shone through the door's frame as a thin layer of ash fell into the door, covering the bottom half of her. Confused, Susie bent down once more and put her hand into the frame. She felt an odd weight being put on it, as if she was being prevented from entering. Then, she let her legs dangle slightly off of the edge. They bent back, towards her, landing perpendicular to her body by this strange weight. With her interest piqued, she dropped into the hole, landing on her back as she was pulled backwards and to the left, and faced with a gray, cloudy sky.

Susie got to her feet, finding that she was now in... Hometown. Specifically, the area just behind her house, and facing the town proper. Looking back and into the strange door she had entered from, she found that it was somewhat sinking into the ground at a forty five degree angle, buried underneath a pile of ash somewhat. When she'd exited the door, the gravity had shifted. Hometown, and the area that surrounded it, was a complete mess. The sky was a foreboding dark gray, covered with billowing storm clouds, though no rain nor snow fell from it. Barely any trees remained in the once heavily wooded area, any that were left resembling dark, burnt spires that rose above the ground. They were so sparse that she could see far past where hometown was, even though all there was to see was a never ending expanse of white and gray ash. Susie debated taking off her mask, but thought that this may be useful if the air was dangerous as well, so she decided to keep it on. Her boots had turned back to a reasonable weight as well, leaving no reason to take anything off quite yet.

Looking towards the town, she could tell from here that the place was much in the same state of the trees, with most of the buildings being dilapidated and burnt until they were no longer recognizable. Her house, however, was the least destroyed of all of the buildings. In fact, it looked the normal amount of destroyed that it always had been. No light source could be spotted that would even allow her to see any of this. It was as if the world was inherently visible, and normal laws of physics hadn't applied here. And why should they have? This was just another failed test. The rest of existence no longer cares about this world. It had been left to die, so why make sense if nothing matters?

Susie was about to walk to the house she once called home when something out of the ordinary caught her eye. There was a figure, standing at the edge of hometown and facing her. If her depth perception was to be trusted, it was only a little taller than her. It was somewhat chubby and stood on two tall, pure black legs that connected to a larger body, which then connected to a white, incredibly disproportionate head that was taller than both. She couldn't spot arms of any kind. Even with the size of it's head, she couldn't quite make out it's features. Susie was only dozen or so feet from the house so she carefully made her way to the front door, keeping an eye on the figure just in case it had tried to do anything.

Susie walked parallel to the front of the house, daring not to let her vision stray from the figure. This world didn't apply to the normal laws of nature or physics. Nothing was to be trusted. When she felt a doorknob collide with her side, she jumped a little, but quickly maneuvered inside. She was still able to see the creature with the door half open. She began to close it slowly, keeping a very close eye on the figure until there was only a couple inches left to see through. In the minuscule time it took for the gap between the door and the frame to be closed, the creature had easily cleared the space between hometown and her house, and by the time the door was closed it was already furiously banging on the door. Susie was sent reeling backwards, landing on her back and scuttling away from the door. The banging stopped after a few moments. The door easily would have shattered if it had continued, but it stopped. For what purpose? It wasn't even breathing, but she could still feel it's presence on the other side of the door. Waiting.   
  
How in the hell was she supposed to put up a fight against something that fast?

  
The decision was already made for her. Susie simply did not posses the dexterity to deal with such a quick enemy, even at her best. Attempting to best everything via combat would be the death of her. Susie looked around the house, the sense of familiarity being tainted by the incredibly disturbing circumstance it was placed in. Not that there were many great memories in that house to corrupt in the first place. Upon entering the kitchen, the realization came that everything had been left the way she remembered it in her own world. Broken down and non functional furniture, without power, without polish. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Susie flicked off the flashlight, just in case it somehow attracted the creature outside. This left only the faint gray light that shone in the windows as light sources.

Susie thought back to her previous actions, regretting her decision to leave the duffle bag and ax back at Toriel's place. It would've raised suspicion, no doubt, but having any means to protect herself would've been incredibly beneficial. While thinking of means of self defense, she was reminded of the knife in her backpack. She swung the pack off her shoulders, ruffling through it's contents until she found the knife once more. Without any sort of sheath to speak of, she had to work with holding onto it. Susie zipped the bag back up and swung it around her shoulders, still being incredibly cautious around the front door. Susie decided she would inspect the upstairs. The floorboards creaked painfully below her feet, every step making much more noise than Susie would've liked. She no longer felt the presence of the creature outside, but she was sure it was still there.

She felt a little dread in her heart when she entered the upstairs hallway to find her bedroom door wide open, the faint sound of crying coming from within. She could tell from the top of the stairs. Susie hoped more than anything in the world that nothing would be in her room to greet her. Every creak of the floor below her built the tension higher as she made her way to the door's edge, knife ready to strike, and peeked from behind the wall into her room. And there, sitting on the edge of her bed, was an exact copy of herself. She was still wearing her usual white-blue shirt and torn jeans. She was sobbing into her palms when she looked up to meet Susie's gaze. Her hands shook as she uttered something in a shaky, shy voice.

“N-No... Not another one... Not again...”  
  
Susie's heart leaped into her throat when she felt the floor below her give way, first her right foot sinking into the floor, followed by the surrounding floor cracking and giving way as well, sending her falling to the kitchen floor below. Landing on her back sent a wave of pain through her entire body, and shortly after, the kitchen floor began to crack as well. Without any time to get up, the floor buckled beneath her once more, sending her falling into a dark, dimly lit room a couple meters down. A loud splash echoed through the room as she hit the layer of liquid that covered the floor, covering her entire body. If not for the mask, she would've surely swallowed and choked on this liquid. Susie got to her feet and, being incredibly winded from the fall, could barely hold herself up. She knew these feelings would fade soon enough, but in the moment it felt like she was weaker than ever before, and was on the edge of throwing up. These feelings only got worse when she realized what the liquid was. She couldn't smell anything due to the mask, and she wasn't able to taste it. But the color was a dead give away.  
  
Susie's senses returning to her fully now, she found that she was waist deep in a pool of almost black blood. The only light sources in this basement area came from the floor above, and even in it's dim light she could identify the liquid. She felt her body shake, but knew that if she was to get discouraged and scared from this alone, she wouldn't be prepared for anything after this. It could only get worse from here. She needed to be strong. Susie began to wade in the water for a second before realizing both of her hands were empty. She panicked, looking around the room frantically before sighing in relief. The knife and flashlight had been floating in the blood around where she landed. She picked up the weapon and tried to survey her surroundings a bit more by flicking on the flashlight.

She was met with dozens of pairs of teal eyes staring back at her, reflected off of the light.

Susie backed away slowly as a cacophony of growling and snapping came from the direction she had the light pointed in. There were too many of them. No matter what they were, if they had hostile intent, they could easily outnumber her. She only had one choice. Susie turned and began to sprint as fast as she could in the pool. She didn't dare look back. As long as the eyes weren't in the direction she was heading, she needed to keep moving. Luckily she could spot the light of a half open door seeping into the room. The growling only got more intense as she reached a dozen feet away from the door. The creatures behind her were desperate for a meal, now, and the gnashing of teeth and erratic howls that echoed across the water were proof of this.

  
As soon as she entered the room, she had barely any time to pay attention to it as she slammed the door shut. Nearly glossing over the large wheel in the middle, she began to turn it clockwise, praying to anything that would take her prayers that it was the correct way to turn it. A couple loud bangs against the door, followed by frantic scratching, let Susie know that it was the right choice. The echo of her boots upon the floor were deafening as she stepped back from the door, her back hitting the wall behind her. Blood dripped from her clothes, staining the floor as it made little pools of dark red liquid on the floor. She had a few things to mull over now that there was air in her lungs. She was now in a gray, featureless steel hallway, which made a sharp turn to the left on her left side, and ended abruptly on the right. It was very akin to the hallway outside of the flesh prison that lead to the sea. Her surroundings, however, were the least of her concerns.  
  
Another Susie. Another one of herself. Really, she should've expected it, she had seen copies of herself twice already. One in the forest, though that was a less convincing copy, and Suze. Maybe it's the fact that in those two cases, there was enough of a visual distinction between them and her. Besides the clothes, this last time was like she was looking in a mirror. What was she doing alive in that dead, deserted world? How long had she been there, and why hadn't she turned into some sort of mutant? If everything else had been destroyed, why was she left behind? She'd love to ask her all of these questions, but now she was unsure how she would get back up at all. Even if the fall wasn't necessarily long, that room was uninhabitable.

Susie came to the conclusion that wondering how she would get back would have to be an issue dwelt upon later. Right now, she needed to keep moving. Time was of the essence. She turned to her left and began to walk down the corridor, attempting as best she could to keep her footsteps from making too much noise. Her backpack seemed to be intact, despite everything. The hallway kept turning left for a while until she reached another dead end, this time with two doors on each side of the hallway, both being about as blank as the hallway they were attached to, besides the wheels in the middle of them. The hallway's actual end was a simple, featureless steel wall. Deciding to enter the leftmost door first, she turned the wheel on it's surface counter clockwise. The door squealed open with little resistance.

Gusts of wind pushed against Susie as she stepped into a large semi-circular room, the wall she was facing being comprised of glass. Lining this glass wall were strange, white, steel tablets with dark screens on their surface. Indiscernible trash and rubble littered the steel floors, making traversal of the room a bit harder than normal as Susie hopped from clear spot to clear spot, attempting to get closer to the glass to get a better look at what lay beyond. Before she could, however, a faint flickering light from underneath a rubble pile caught her eye. She moved a few pieces of steel and stone out of the way before she found a small tablet about the size of her head. The screen on it's surface flicked to life as lines of strange white symbols flashed on a blue background.

A strange feeling overtook Susie as her vision began to blur. She didn't recognize these symbols from anywhere else that she could remember, but somehow she felt that she could understand them. Her hands shook as her eyes attempted to adjust to the screen.

“0: A complete failure. Terrain has failed to load correctly, and none of the organisms have matured efficiently. All turned within two minutes.  
1: Shall we cut the chains?  
0: I believe so.

2: Are you certain? There seems to be improvement in the memories of the subjects.  
0: What did you observe?  
2: Before turning, one of them called out for family members.  
0: Were their names of significance?  
2: Indeed. They were names of subjects we've yet to test.

1: We will keep our advancements and disregard our failures. It is foolish to think we would treat failures as just that. As embarrassing as it may be, there is much to learn from them. We'll send these advancements to the other spheres.   
0: Of course.  
1\. We're cutting the chains and locking the chamber in ten minutes. Evacuate to your specified off sphere locations in the meantime.

[End Of Transmission]”

The next thing Susie feels is bile filling her throat. She scrambles to unmask herself, doing so just in time for the vomit in her mouth to flow out of her mouth and onto the steel below. It was like she had the wind knocked out of her once again. Was her understanding of the language from her so called “attunement”? Was the conversation she just read worth feeling this amount of nausea? She breathed in deep once her body had stopped heaving, feeling a stale and burnt air fill her lungs as she got to her feet. What was it that they were trying to do that required this amount of rigorous and volatile testing? And what did it mean by “off sphere?” Without any way to answer these questions, she pushed them to the back of her head as another curiosity overtook her. Susie's body shook as she walked to the cracked, slightly blue tinted glass wall in front of her, looking down at the sight below.   
  
Before her was an enormous room, miles across each side. At least a mile or so below was what seemed to be what remained of another Hometown. This chamber was in an even worse condition than the last, with only a few buildings remaining as a massive sinkhole had swallowed up the rest. The ashy ground gave way to a deep, dark pit that covered the majority of the ground space below. What actually lurked beyond this hole was a mystery. Somehow, she could see all of this without any sort of light source. There seemed to be a sort of dim ambient light that covered this entire area. This looked like the way to go, as unfortunate and foreboding of a prospect that was. Hoping that the door across the hallway would lead to a way down, and dreading the implications if this turned out to not be the case, Susie walked back to the middle of the room and attached the mask back onto her face.   
  
With nothing but a hope for answers and a fear of the unknown, Susie pressed on.

  
The vacant, sterile steel halls echoed emptily with the sound of footsteps as Susie walked through the door, and made haste to enter the next directly in front of her. She knew what sort of creatures lurked here, and knew it was best not to tarry for long. The door opened to a large rectangular room, about as featureless as the hallway behind her, save for a large lift that spanned the width of the room in front of her. The lift was made out of a different sort of darker steel than the rest of this place, and heavily resembled the bunker elevator from back at Hometown. Though, considering how many Hometowns there could be here, she didn't find this very surprising.

Susie stepped into the lift, and hesitantly pressed the down arrow on the panel. A pair of rusted chain link doors scraped the floor as they closed her in. A most horrendous metal squealing erupted from above her as the elevator slowly began it's descent, as if the entire mechanism was a creature itself, just barely clinging onto life. Susie decided she was to swear off elevators entirely once all of this was sorted. This thought, however, would bring her to the conclusion that things will never be “sorted”. There's no way she could go back to normal life after she destroyed the core. Not after all she experienced and knew. Even if this was some elaborate fever dream, she'd be permanently affected by the events that took place here. She's lost friends, new and old. She's currently going through hell and back to save any last shred of life that she can from constant torture. Going through everything here would leave a mark on more than just her body.

Susie's thoughts were interrupted when even more screeching metal noises came from below her, as well as the entire lift tilting slightly to it's side, knocking her off balance a little. Hoping something terrible hadn't happened to increase her growing fear of elevators even more, Susie walked cautiously to the elevator's entrance and looked down to the best of her abilities. There was a gap of about two or three feet between the elevator and the shaft's walls, and between this she could spot the issue. Everything from girders to support beams to thick metal wires clogged up the entire bottom half of the shaft. The destruction didn't look natural either, it was as if something filled this shaft with miscellaneous metal parts with the intent to stop the elevator. She wouldn't give up this easily, however.   
Susie walked backwards and readied herself, then rushed the doors. Their rusted frame broke surprisingly easily as the doors burst open. As open as they could, anyway. As they hit the wall of the elevator shaft rather quickly. There was enough space there for her to climb up the door and onto the roof of the elevator. With a quick inspection of the rubble below, she was able to plan out a way to crawl in between some of the rubble in order to get below. She was able to see the bottom of the shaft through the rubble. Though it was tough to gauge how far down exactly it was, she was sure it was a height she could fall down and live without much injury.

Before thinking to do that though, she had something to take care of. Susie dropped the backpack off of her shoulders and unzipped it, snatching the radio from inside.   
  
“Hey. You there?”  
  


Only static replied. As she expected. Even disregarding whatever supernatural interference it could be, it was a low chance that the distance would let them speak. Quickly zipping the bag back up and wearing it on her back, she jumped down to the steel behind the elevator. The hole was between two support beams and a large girder that stuck out of the wall awkwardly. It was hard to tell whether it was made by someone, or whether it was simply a useful coincidence. In either case, it beat having to jump out the window of the floor above, so she took what she could get. The hole was just big enough for Susie's body to get through along with the backpack, and she slowly lowered herself down feet first. Jagged metal and rebar poked out at her from many directions, and it was when she felt a sharp stinging in her lower back that she realized she wasn't taking this as seriously as she had to. She looked behind her as best as she could and found a piece of rebar sticking out at her, a bit of fresh blood on it's tip. She hoped that wouldn't leave a mark or get infected, but she reasoned she had more intensive worries than a simple infection.

A bit of awkward maneuvering had to be done to keep both herself and her backpack from getting stuck or stabbed, but eventually she found her legs dangling over empty air. Susie did her best to look downward towards the bottom of the elevator shaft. She was more easily able to guess the distance between her and the floor, and she decided it was probably a dozen or so feet down. Knowing she could easily make that jump without much trouble, she lowered herself slowly until her entire body was below the blockage, and let go. The drop to the floor didn't last long, and the small pain she felt from the impact was negligible. Whatever the puppet had done to her had certainly worked it's magic, but she was wondering how long this boost of strength would last. That was a problem for the future, however. Right now, she was at the bottom of an elevator shaft filled with rubble, with an elevator and hundreds of pounds of steel above her ready to drop. Susie got to her feet and climbed out of the bottom of the shaft, finding herself in a rectangular room, just like the one above, with a similar steel door at the end. Susie opened her bag, equipping her knife and flashlight, and continued through the door.   
  
She exited to find ash beneath her feet, realizing she was finally at the bottom of the gigantic room she saw before. Looking upward, she could see the platform that jutted out from the wall above her, which held what she would refer to as the observation room. To her it didn't feel like she had traveled miles down to get here considering how slow the elevator was going, but time and space in this place seemed to more or less do whatever it pleased anyway. Before her was a desert of ash and discarded metal pieces, very little of anything resembling houses or buildings. The only thing of major consequence was the dark pit in the center of the room that she saw from the observatory. It seemed to be the only way forward from this point, so she began her trek to the pit, walking through the uneven and shifting ash she'd gotten so used to over the past while.

The walking didn't last long, however. She was stopped in her tracks when she noticed something strange. Shoe prints in the ash. Ones that matched the boots she was currently wearing. Susie stumbled forward over a dune of ash and stopped at the top, looking down. Between her and the pit was a body, face down in the ash. A body with a purple complexion and dark clothing. A body with dark brown hair. A backpack laid beside it. A gas mask strapped to it's face. Strange, flesh like boots on it's feet.   
  
A knife plunged deep into her back, after having been stabbed into it multiple times before, leaving gaping infected wounds.

None of the things she saw in front of her shook her compared to one single observation.

The body looked fresh.

The last thing Susie wanted to do was inspect further. In fact, she wouldn't be opposed to forgetting this had happened entirely. She knew who she was, though, and she knew her morbid curiosity would win out in the end. The ash shifted below her feet as she stepped closer to the body, an uneasy feeling filling her throat like bile as her breaths grew short. As her left knee hit the ash below, she bent down and got a closer look at the masked figure. More accurately, she attempted to determine what the mask was covering up. She didn't have to unmask the body to know this though. Through the eye holes, she saw exactly what she suspected. Dull, gray, lifeless eyes staring back at her. The worst part, perhaps, was the fact that she couldn't tell her eyes' reflection and the body's apart.

Susie got back to her feet and stumbled backwards a little before she felt the clasp of a hand around her ankle.

She gasped in surprise, immediately readying her knife and looking down at her assailant. But what met her eyes was another, more deteriorated version of herself. The grasp gave way easily as Susie fully viewed what had grasped her. The top half of a barely recognizable Susie clone pathetically clawed across the ground towards her. Her usual dark purple skin had lost it's color to the point where it nearly blended in with the ash that surrounded her. There was nothing past the bottom half of her torso but a broken spine that jutted out and laid across the ash behind her like a tail. She wasn't wearing clothing, and her skin had been tautly pulled across what bones were left in her body. Her left arm was completely missing, and she weakly dragged herself across the ash with her right hand, more resembling talons now. The right half of her skull, along with anything that resembled hair, was missing entirely, and leaked a dark tar like substance from her mouth.

The haunting corpse in front of her shuddered with every weak attempt at a crawl towards her. Susie wasn't sure if there was anything she could say. Visions of Suze rushed to her mind. Another life she couldn't save. She knew there was nothing to be gained from staying any longer here but painful regrets and future nightmares, so she backed away and started towards the pit in the ground. Even an abyss was more welcoming to her than whatever rested beneath the dunes of ash that blanketed this place. She reached the part of the room where the ash began to sink deeper into the ground, until all that was left was the depths of the void. It only took one unlucky piece of wood jutting out of the ground for her to trip, sending her into a tumbling fall into the pit of the unknown that lay before her. The blurry mess that consisted of her vision did nothing to improve her orientation, and before long she felt no ground beneath her at all. She felt everything in her body seize up in an all encompassing fear as she watched the light of the room above get smaller and smaller. Any ambient sound that pervaded in the room above was gone now, and only silence remained. And though she knew she was falling, she felt no wind or air as she fell.

After a while, the light in the distance disappeared entirely, leaving her in a black she had only been exposed to in dreams. An impenetrable, inconceivably viscous darkness. In the fall, she had let go of her flashlight, but managed to hold her knife tight. Now, she was left with only a fragile excuse of a weapon, and what remained in her backpack. After an amount of time left uncounted to Susie, she felt her weightlessness cease as she softly landed on a dense, hard floor. This floor, however, was just as black and invisible as everything else in the area. Everything besides, oddly enough, her. She could see herself and her belongings clear as day, if nothing else. This only escalated the feeling of her not belonging here. She was not supposed to be here. Never did she belong in this place. But here she was.

Observing her surroundings, or rather the lack thereof, Susie began to wander rather aimlessly through the darkness that surrounded her. She wasn't sure how she would navigate this place until she remembered something she was ashamed she hadn't earlier. Her backpack made a small thump as it hit the floor, which echoed for what felt like a full minute. The same happened with the sound of her unzipping it. There, she saw the strange purple lantern she had pondered on the purpose of in her subconscious. If this didn't work, she wasn't sure what would. Taking the handle in her hand and holding the lantern in front of her, she began to turn the dial clockwise until it was turned as far as it could.  
  
Below her feet were black bricks, now illuminated by her light which stretched out about a dozen feet in every direction. Packing her backpack up again, Susie began to wander through the flat area, her footsteps making not a single sound. Sound itself didn't seem to be consistent in this place, but she let go of the notion that conventional physics were unbreakable a long time ago. The knife in one hand and the lantern in the other, Susie walked the void for minutes upon minutes, looking for any sort of landmark to guide her. It was when she saw a faint flicker of light in the distance that she began to find any semblance of hope again. Susie ran briskly towards a faint blue light until she recognized what it was she was actually running towards.  
  
Susie stepped into a long hallway, lined with pillars on both sides, with the left side interspersed with large windows. The hallway stretched far upward, at least ten times her height, and stretched forward for what looked like about a mile. As she walked further and further into the hallway, sound began to return. Looking out the window, she could see and hear hundreds of shooting stars of all colors flying past outside, all being backed by a starlit night sky, and an ever bright light blue moon that served as the only lighting the hallway had. The stars made a sort of twinkling, high pitched whistling noise as they fell past the windows, and the entire scene would almost be considered beautiful had Susie not walked further down the hallway, and noticed what all of the slumped over purple and black figures were that lined the hallway as it continued.

Piles of corpses and bones littered the floor and sides of the hallway as she walked further and further to the hallway's end. All wearing gas masks and wearing similar clothing as herself. All with a purple or pink complexion. She didn't need to expect further to understand what they were, but the sheer amount of bodies was something she simply wasn't expecting to have to deal with. Some were decapitated, others had puncture wounds and holes the size of her arm in their stomachs and backs. All of these puncture wounds came in threes, in a straight line. As the hallway came to a close, she saw a large, hulking figure that faced away from her. Something large with white fur and golden hair, and wore a tattered purple cape. There was also a sound emanating from the creature that sounded like a sort of crunchy chewing noise. Susie walked a step closer, and the creature turned it's head.  
  
Three glowing white eyes and a mouth dripping blood stared at her as a malformed Asgore turned to face her. Perfectly circular white eyes replaced his normal ones, along with another on his forehead. His body had been malformed to the point where his form was so starkly dissimilar to his normal version that one almost couldn't recognize it as him. He had a much more slim torso, but his arms were long enough to reach the floor without having to bend his torso over, and his hands had grown to twice their size, growing additional golden talons on the ends of his fingers.

His entire body turned around as he threw a bloodied and disfigured body from his right hand. In his left he carried a scarlet colored trident, which loudly crashed against the floor as he turned his body around. For a split second, she saw something in the darkness behind him. Beyond the hallway's end, in a black and formless void, she saw a pulsating orb of flesh and machinery that she could barely see in the short time it wasn't covered by his cape. Could she be at the core? What else could it be? What else would this horrid semblance of Asgore be so hell bent on defending from Susie's clones? Was this the reason she was given this knife? Asgore chattered his teeth and breathed heavily as he looked over what Susie assumed was a fresh victim to him. And Susie could do nothing but stand frozen in her place. Hundreds of versions of herself had tried to pass him before. What would make her think she would be the one to succeed? What if she was destined to be nothing but another failed so called “chosen one”? She knew she was being fed lies from the puppet. He must have known about this.

The monster in front of her crawled closer on his hands and feet. There was no way she would be another failure. Not with all of her friends on the line, not with everything she ever knew in the balance. Susie didn't even have to defeat him necessarily, just needed to pass him and stab the heart. He seemed slow enough, but she assumed there was something up his sleeve. If the clones were half as smart as she was, they would know this too. All she could do was wait for it to make a move.

But Asgore simply stood there, idling, waiting for her instead. This was the last obstacle. Even if she died here just like all the others, if she stabbed the heart, she would have died happy knowing that she would at least have given the creators of these tests hell to pay. Just one stab was all it would take.

Her survival was secondary.

It was time to break the cycle.   
  


Susie gripped the knife in her hand tighter, and as if he read her mind, Asgore immediately leapt toward Susie at a speed that knocked her right out of her daze as a blood red trident flew towards her face. Dropping the lantern to the ground and ducking to the left just barely saved her from colliding with him and as he landed, the trident squealed and sparks flew from its tip as it scraped across the ground. Asgore stopped in his tracks and turned quickly to face her, swinging the trident across the room in the process. Susie had to back away again and scramble to her feet just to avoid getting eviscerated by the weapon, and Asgore was still a couple meters from her at least. She was outmatched, both by the length and range of his weapon, and his raw speed and strength. There's no way she could run for the heart as Asgore would close the gap between them with ease. The only way for her to have a chance would be to incapacitate or distract him in some way. But how?  
  
Before she had a chance to think any further, Asgore readied another attack, this time crouching down for a second, then leaping directly upwards. Susie looked upward just in time to see him hit the top of his jump, now descending at a frightening speed with his spear pointed directly downward. Susie did her best to jump out of the way, Asgore's attack missing once again, lodging his trident directly into the ground, cracking the blue brick below. Susie took this opportunity to quickly do any sort of damage, and raised the knife above her head, striking it down into the arm of the beast. Opening his mouth, yet making not a sound, Asgore stretched his arm out to his side suddenly, brushing Susie off of him and sending her into the air. The impact was rough as she landed on her back, but the near empty backpack softened the blow to the point where it didn't knock the wind out of her. Susie got to her feet quickly, being far further away from him than she realized. That attack would probably only anger him, but she would hope that would make him make more mistakes.   
  
Susie looked towards the void that was behind Asgore, and the dark red heart that floated within it. She also observed the path between her and the heart, and found it empty besides a single bone and all of the blood that caked the floor of the area he stood. Susie got to her feet as quickly as she could and, looking backward, began to run towards the heart. Asgore seeing this seemed to make him even more agitated than before. Something unexpected followed, something Susie had no way to account for. A circle of sparks began to surround Asgore as he watched Susie run, before his cape erupted in an inferno of flames. Dislodging his trident from the floor would reveal that the tips of each of the three tines of the spear were covered in flames as well.

Susie barely had time to react as Asgore lifted his arm and faced his open palm towards her, from which erupted a white ball of flames that left a trail of fire on the ground where it traveled. Susie dodged to the right of the fire, tripping in the process and landing on the ground face first. She began recuperate and got to her knees before she felt an incredible weight on her back which planted her body firmly into the floor of the void. Susie looked behind her back and could see an enraged Asgore with one foot on her backside. He took no time at all to make his dominance known, pushing further down on her back and putting a terrible amount of pressure on her ribs. Susie squirmed to try to get out from underneath him, clawing at the ground in front of her with her left arm and attempting to stab at his leg with her right. It was when Susie felt an unbearable pain in her left shoulder that she knew this was a futile act. She looked to her left and screamed as, in her blurred vision, she could see the burning tine of the trident digging deep into her skin. Susie could feel a mixture of blood and saliva pooling on her back as Asgore twisted the trident, shooting an ungodly burning pain through her body the likes of which she had never felt before. She could do nothing but tear up and, to no avail, claw away with her knife hand.   
  
It only took one more twist.

There was no pain from her left arm anymore. No feelings at all, in fact. She felt as if her lungs were getting smaller by the second as she began to hyperventilate, her eyes tearing up as she could barely make out the form of her severed left arm in front of her. This was no longer about hunger. This was about hate. He wanted to cause as much damage and pain to her as he could. She could feel the loss of blood almost instantly, her consciousness dipping below the halfway point in less than a second as her vision blurred even more so in addition to her tears inhibiting her vision already. There wasn't a lot of bleeding due to the flames, but this did little to comfort her. The weight of Asgore's foot was lifted, and in its place, a talon-lined hand roughly grasped Susie's chest. She could feel a couple ribs crack as multiple sharp pains laced their way across her chest like an explosive chain reaction of hellish agony. The hand holding her turned itself. She was in its grasp a few feet off of the ground, looking directly into the monstrosity's eyes. It opened its mouth, bearing terribly long and disfigured teeth, and raised Susie's head towards his maw.  
  
She was going to fail if she didn't do something soon. Anything. She needed out, but the pain was so much. With what little strength remained in her body, and with only half the determination she had to succeed at all costs, she raised her right hand and plunged the knife's blade deep into the right eye of Asgore. It sprayed a white liquid across her mask as Asgore recoiled backwards, dropping Susie on her back once again. This time hurt exponentially more than the last, and nearly knocked her out then and there. The pain from her ribs and her loss of a limb utterly destroyed any physical strength she thought she had. Something was keeping her alive though. A burning flame deep within her, hotter than any pain she could ever experience. The determination to do what's right. Susie slowly got to her feet, using as much of her physical strength as she could and balancing on one arm to get her into a standing position. She paid little mind to the squirming and wailing Asgore in front of her and turned backwards, toward the heart.

  
Susie stumbled weakly towards the still beating bio-mechanical mass that was the cause of all the pain in this world. Pipes and ducts of all sorts spouted from it's skin and disappeared into the void as the crimson surface pulsed with life, or something close to it. It was nearly twice the size of her, and began to beat faster and faster the more she approached it. Her knife reacted in a similar way, glowing a dark red color as she neared the demented organ. She raised the knife above her head as she was but a few steps from the last thing between her and salvation. The vision and sensation of three, red, sharp points piercing through her back and to her front shook her entire system. She puked blood into her mask as her lungs began to fill with blood. The bottom part of her mask had filled with a mixture of her blood and tears, and created an abhorrent scent and taste of metal around her face. She knew Asgore was too late however, and despite everything she had endured up until this point, found it in her to smile.   
  
Susie fell upon the heart, and plunged the dagger into it's surface, and that was all it took. A bright flash of light filled her vision as she got blasted backward, a high pitched wail echoing around her as the ground shook from the sound alone. The knife, in all the commotion, had disappeared entirely.   
  
When the white faded from her eyes, she saw and felt an orange, warm glow from above. Hundreds of miles above her, she could see sunlight from a mile wide circular hole in the ceiling. Susie would lay on her side, the trident sticking out of her back still lodged firmly inside her body. She used the last of her strength to unmask herself, tearing the apparatus from her face as blood spilled to the floor, both from her mask and another influx of blood vomit from her throat. She curled her legs up to her belly as much as she could as her blood pooled around her, a seemingly endless stream of tears falling from her eyes. The sobbing started soon after, her pained wails coming between bouts of blood spilling from her mouth. From the hole in the ceiling, she could see gallons of water spilling over the edges and all the way down to where she was. The cold water that began to surround her body felt nice on her wounds, but as her vision blurred she knew her time was short.   
  
Even through all the tears pouring from her eyes, she cracked a smile. She could see nothing but orange now, and the pain was beginning to fade. She coughed, and began speaking to no one in particular.

“H-Heh... I... I d-did it g-guys... I s-saved everyone...”  
Another coughing fit, but she could barely feel it.  
“I...I hope e-everyone's okay... Y-You were all I... had...”  
More tears, but no nerves left to feel them.

More words, but no contentiousness to hear them.

More feelings, but no mind left to feel them.

Nothing but bliss remained.

Nothing but love.

Nothing but light.  
  



	4. ACT 4: LIFE OF VOID

Susie quickly awoke and gasped for air. A dark red moon above, a stark white sky surrounding it. In shock, she stood and found herself in the endless, shallow water dream she had been in only once before. The strange, fog-headed Hazel was absent, however. Instead, an endless horizon stretched in all directions, the water whitened by the sky's reflection. Susie began to wander, slowly at first, in a drunken haze. but as her heart began to quicken it's beats, she began to sprint across the endless landscape. Nothing in the way of landmarks greeted her. Just the moon, the sky, and the water. Forever.

Susie's sprinting soon came to a close as all the air in her lungs left her, leaving her gasping for air once more. Was this the afterlife? Was this her punishment for her cowardice before? Had she not made up for it since? Her mind was wracked with questions, some with answers that more often than not lead to more questions. Susie dropped to her knees and silently despaired in this limbo dimension that seemed to be what remained of her existence, and watched as the blood from the three wounds in her chest and her missing left arm leaked onto the ground. 

In an instant, the sky flicked to a black, colorless void, and the water turned a shade of dark purple, much alike the color of Susie. Next, she felt a presence beyond her own lurking behind her. Susie stood up and turned her body to meet a headless Hazel, standing still as a statue as white fog erupted from the place where there should be a head. But she felt no fear. She knew this wasn't the original Hazel, the one she hadn't spent time with and became a friend of. Just a mirage, and nothing more. As if her blank stare wasn't enough to indicate her knowledge of this, she spoke in a deadpan drawl to the image of her friend in front of her.

“I don't care about you anymore. You don't scare me. Leave.”  
A voice spoke to her from within her head. Something that sounded like Hazel, but something was just... Off. Like there was another voice underneath. 

“Does anything make you feel anything anymore?” The voice remarked in a sarcastic tone.  
“What do you mean?”  
“Aside from the pain and relative fear, of course. What has your useless vessel felt? When was the last time you smiled, laughed, cried, screamed, hated? When was the last time you've felt a genuinely powerful emotion instead of simply looking upon your surroundings with that same boring, flat looked face you've worn for the past while?”  
“Why the hell do you care? What, are you some inner demon or some shit? I have nothing to say to you. Maybe I would've been able to laugh or cry or scream if I got to see my friends again. But look at me. Most of my midsection is missing, and so is my arm, and I think I'm in the afterlife now. But I don't care. If it means they're safe, it was worth it.”  
“And if it doesn't mean they're safe?”  
“Then... I hope that the damage I did on my way out hurt whatever put so many of my friends through endless amounts of pain.”

“You haven't felt it yet, then?”  
“Felt what?”  
“Something else beats in your body aside from your heart. Something that will keep you alive, even through all the damage you've taken, and perhaps more. But this life is not yours, nor does it owe anything to you once it leaves. You may want to spend what life you have left feeling something of worth, but you won't last long after your purpose has been fulfilled. You think this is the afterlife, but only now will your life have meaning.”  
“I doubt you'll tell me much more than vague shit anyway, so just tell me what to do, and as long as it makes them pay for what they did or helps my friends, I'll do it.”  
“I'm glad that we have the same goal, if only partly. There's a lake in your chamber, correct? Simply walk to it's surface and look to the moon. You'll understand much more from that point onward. As you said, I can't say too much, as your time here is limited.”  
“Don't think I'm doing this for you, or whoever you answer to. This is my goal, and mine alone, and whatever happens, happens.”

Susie knew saying this was a mistake the moment it left her mouth. Before she could even register what was happening she was on the floor with two hands in a vice grip around her neck. Though she had felt nothing of her pain before, she felt the distinct feeling of losing oxygen as her throat felt as if it was getting crushed. The facade's voice got increasingly hostile as it spoke it's next words.

“You best be more thankful to the makers of your current existence, you miserable little wretch. You will listen to my directions, and you will succeed. All of the eggs in your brain will hatch and cleave your skull open, and from the canyon in your head will slither the hell to be brought upon the conductors of your suffering. And after such events have transpired, you will finally be granted an end to your suffering. You will die, broken and shattered. You have have nothing left to lose. Go.”

With that final word, Susie blinked and gasped for air, and the environment that surrounded her changed completely to the sight of the dark steel walls around her descending slowly. Or rather, that she was ascending in a bloodied steel cage. She was being lifted back up into the flesh chapel? How did she get here? A quick examination of her steated body revealed that she was just as injured and bloodied as she was before. Her arm was cut off at the shoulder, not even a stub left to indicate anything was there in the first place. Three puncture wounds the size of her fist were pierced through her midsection in a vertical pattern, starting from just above her waist and ending just below her throat. A strange sensation ran through her body, or perhaps it was the lack of any sensation at all. She felt no blood spilling out of her wounds. In fact, whatever warmth she could feel in her body before had left. The boots and mask she had been gifted had vanished, leaving her in only socks. She also noticed strange, dark, damp lines that went across her entire body, as if she had been grabbed by something with an incredibly frail looking, yet immense hand. Then, she noticed some sort of warm, flesh like thing in her right hand, and raised it to look at what she clutched.

Susie held in her blood soaked hand... half of a heart. A heart that she soon realized, due to her injuries, was most likely hers. The insides of the heart were splayed out haphazardly and tubes loosely hanged from the inside out like exposed wiring. Susie let her hand drop back down and let the heart onto the floor of the cage as she lifted her hand to feel her chest. Where she could once feel a heartbeat, she felt nothing. No warmth, no beating, nothing. Emptiness. Her mind flashed back to the broken, half alive version of herself she saw in the deepest chamber before Asgore. She wondered if, eventually, had her task not been completed, she would find herself in the same situation as her. This line of thought vanished soon enough as the cage's ascent ceased, bringing her to the exposed hallway that lead to the chapel. 

With some difficulty due to her adjusting to her... injury, she got to her feet and began to make her way to the main area of the chapel. She felt a looming sense of dread as she saw that the dark red tendrils she had gotten so used to seeing in this area had turned gray and lifeless, it's pulsing replaced with stillness. As she stepped across the floor, what used to be flesh flaked away and crumbled with little resistance. As she made her way through the prison cell lined hallway, she looked up one more time. The black void above had disappeared, and in the parts she wasn't able to see before was... Nothing. 

The darkness held nothing that she couldn't already see, and the only thing it really obscured was a blank steel ceiling. The hallway she had imagined in her head to stretch infinitely above her vision, in reality, simply ended only a short distance above where the void was. Susie was left in a state of confusion, relief, and even disappointment. Along with this discovery, she noticed that the space was incredibly quiet. What used to be a clamoring, nearly unbearable hub of screams and nightmares was completely silent now. If there was ever anything in these cells, it was gone now. 

The main area of the chapel was much in the same state. Even the strange bone sculpture in the middle of the fountain was gone, along with any sort of indication that there was a blood fountain at all. The blood, and all the flesh that was inside of it, was gone. Not even a trace of the puppet was here, everything had been evaporated and grayed out. Above, she could see a much brighter light leaking in from the hole above that led to Susie's home, the dim light of a few bulbs being replaced by the gray light of an overcast sky. Looking to her right, across from the puppet's workshop, she walked over to the double doors and was met with a small stairwell that led upwards. Susie dizzily walked up the stairs, feeling herself get more exhausted with each step. And as each step led her upwards, she could feel a sense of cold creep into her body. Something she hadn't felt in a long time. She wasn't sure how she was feeling anything at all in her current state, but she knew that she was so close to home that she wouldn't dare stop now. The steel door that had previously been bolted shut was wide open. The bar that kept the door in place sat just a few inches away from the door, on the steel floor. 

Said steel floor was all that was left of Susie's house. 

Susie looked around at the various pieces of wood debris that littered the ground around her, yet mysteriously completely avoiding the area in front of the door. Her vision blurred. She would have to ponder upon this at a later date, as she assumed she didn't have much time left. The wind and falling snow felt refreshing on Susie's skin as she picked through the rubble, making it onto the snow covered ground just outside of where her house once stood. She didn't dare stop now. Susie stumbled through the forest path she had walked dozens of times before in her life, but was now so happy to do so more than anything else. Tears dropped from her cheeks and fell to the snow below as she basked in the natural light of the sun's cloud-filtered light. It was all fake. None of it was truly real, and she knew this. The feeling this gave her, however, was one so powerful that she could almost forget everything that had happened. This was her home. Her friends were such a short distance away. It was fake, but it felt real to her, and that's all she cared about.

Susie nearly tripped onto the road when she reached it, and though she knew whatever kept her going at that moment would need rest soon, she sprinted towards hometown. She sprinted with more strength and passion in her soul that she had ever felt before. Her sobs of happiness were incredibly audible, and she made no attempt to hide them. She wanted everyone and everything to know that she was home. A smile etched it's way onto her face as the snow crunched beneath her feet. Her vision, though blurred, could just barely make out Hometown from here. The diner, the police station, the hospital, the school, everything was still there. 

Everything. 

Susie's walk slowed as she entered the town limits. Wiping the tears away from her face with her hand she could see the snow covered hometown in all it's beauty and majesty. Everything was bright, and colorful, and beautiful. It only took a short walk to make it to the diner. QC's Diner. She had almost forgotten the name. Almost, but never fully. Susie went to the front door and peeked in the glass. Only a couple monsters had attended the restaurant at the time, but it was enough to give her hope. And at the front desk, waiting with a heavyhearted smile to serve her customers was the purple bunny she knew she could rely on to be there for her. Susie smiled as she looked in the door, her hand against the pane as Susie used what little remained of her strength to knock on the window. 

Hazel looked towards the door, and her smile vanished. Her pupils shrunk in shock as she looked at her friend's lacerated body. A single tear rolled down Hazel's cheek as she blinked multiple times, then wiped her eyes in pure disbelief. Susie couldn't do much but wave at her before she fell backwards onto the snow behind her. A scream of terror echoed from somewhere close as Susie blacked out, her last thoughts from her last strain of consciousness ringing clear. 

It's good to be home. 

Susie awoke on a comfortable bed, with a couple warm blankets tucked underneath her body, and her head on a fluffy pillow. Soft, light yellow early morning sunlight poured into the window of Toriel's living room. When she realized where she was and how she was, for the moment at least, safe, she buried her face into her pillow as well as she could and tried to mask the torrential amount of tears and wails that escaped her mouth. She was finally home. Out of the ashen hellscape of the sea, out of the dead pit of void at the core of the planet. She was home. Where she belonged. 

She could do little more than cry into her pillow for minutes on end. That is, until a knock was heard at the door. Susie quickly attempted to dry her tears, but when she saw who walked through the door, this turned out to be a feeble effort. Hazel stood in the doorway, a wave of cold air from outside greeting her as well as her worried, terror stricken face. Tears had begun to fall once again down her violet cheeks. Dressed in new clothing, a pair of black dress pants with a plain white tee shirt, Susie stumbled out of bed and nearly collapsed onto Hazel, the two of them embracing each other tightly. 

“Susie... You feel so cold.”  
“I know, and I'm sorry-.”  
“Shh, please calm down... You don't have to say anything right now. Just breathe.”  
Breathing wasn't as easy as she made it sound for her, but she tried. She wasn't sure how long she simply stood there in Hazel's arms, but she didn't care anymore. It had been too long since she had positive physical contact of any sort, and she needed this more than anything. Even if she, for some reason, felt no warmth from her. Good things never last forever however, so Susie eventually broke from her grasp and sat down on the edge of the fold out bed.   
“Are you okay?” Susie asked shakily.   
“Well, I think so. You're back, at least, so I'm happier now. Just... confused.”  
“How long was I gone?”  
“Eight days. A little over a week.”

Eight days? And they haven't destroyed the place yet? What could they possibly be waiting for?  
“Geez... Toriel still around?”  
“She left a few days ago to look for you. She thought you got lost and stumbled into a different town or something. She took Kris, too. I was asked to look after the house for her while you were gone.”  
Hazel had a grim look on her face before she said the next sentence.   
“I... I think she feels responsible. She hasn't been answering her phone calls since yesterday, but I think she's just so worried sick that she forgot all about us.”  
“I thought the road out of town was blocked?”  
“Some guys came around on the day Toriel left and said it was good to go. A few people left yesterday too, but whether that was for personal reasons or for the same reasons Toriel left, I'm not sure.”  
“How many are left?”  
“Dunno. Half the population, maybe? But more left just before you showed up. Just missed them.”  
“Damn. I hope they're all okay.”  
“I'm sure they are.”

Hazel shifted uncomfortably before sitting down beside Susie.  
“So are you ready to talk about why you're... like this?”  
“I'm not sure yet. I'm sort of wrapping my head around it myself, but I think I'm dead.”  
“Wh-What do you mean?”  
“Don't freak out, I just think what's keeping me alive isn't my heart anymore. Something between alive and dead that I don't think I understand fully.”  
“... How did this happen?”  
“That's kind of a long story, and I don't think you could handle it.”  
“What do you mean?! I can handle myself fine, I just saw one of my best friends collapse at my doorstep with most of her torso gone and a missing arm, and you think I can't handle the truth about why?”

Susie put her hand on Hazel's shoulder and looked her in the eyes. Susie saw a mix of confusion and anger in them, but she knew she couldn't let her know. Not yet. Somehow, the chamber that held Hometown and the surrounding area hadn't been destroyed or dropped yet. She wasn't sure how she would react, but she would imagine panic would be her first reaction. Then, a different thought occurred. What if the chamber did end up getting destroyed? What would her reaction be then? Probably, Susie reasoned, much worse. Who knows what terrible things could come knocking on their door any second? Would it really be better to let her know before that happens?

“Okay. I'll tell you, but you have to promise that you won't freak out or panic. This is, uhh... Some heavy stuff.”  
“Tell me everything.”

And so she did. From the moment she found the doors south of Hometown, all the way to when she arrived back. Every gruesome detail. Every dream. Every person and creature she found along the way, along with retelling Napstablook's recollection of the extermination of a previous chamber. Susie talked for hours, and Hazel was silent the entire time. Tears fell at a few points, but she kept all the questions surely stirring in her head asleep. Eventually, when Susie thought every last detail was told, she ended on her plans to visit the lake once the moon was visible. She wasn't sure what would happen after, but it was the only plan of action she had. Susie sat in silence, waiting for anything in the form of a response. Before long, she noticed Hazel began to shake. 

“S-So this is all a simulation, right?”  
“Yeah.”  
Then, the crying started. Susie, at first, thought it was just due to her taking everything in for the first time. Then she realized an important revelation that she somehow hadn't thought of before. In all the thinking and explaining, she forgot a critical part of what Hazel said before.  
“Toriel and Kris aren't coming back, are they?”  
Now it was Susie's turn to tear up.   
“Asriel isn't coming back either, is he? N-No one who left this town are coming back, are they?”  
Susie wrapped her arm around Hazel and desperately tried to hold back her tears. Something that Hazel didn't bother trying. Tightly embracing her in her arms, she began to wail into Susie's shoulder.   
“Wh-Why?! Why did they leave and make me stay?!”  
Susie had a vain hope inside her that maybe they would be spared, or at the very least kept in some sort of stasis. But she knew this was little more than wishful thinking.   
“I'm sorry. I'm so, s-so sorry Hazel. I'm gonna make things right, don't worry. I'll fix all of this.”  
“You're going to die soon, and I'm g-going to be left alone again...”  
“No, Hazel, Please don't say that, I-”

Hazel could only reply with more tears. She was inconsolable, and with every wail her hug got just that little bit tighter. As close to that point as she was getting, Susie refused to let herself be that vulnerable ever again. She would be allowed to cry when all of this was over. Even if it meant she would be in the afterlife when she did. If her visions were true, and her death at the end of all of this was certain, then she needed to make sure everything would be okay first. If this was impossible, she would make sure that nothing like this could happen to anywhere, ever again. She was going to make things right again, even if it meant she wouldn't be around to see it happen. 

The clock was ticking down for her. She needed to make this count. The moon wouldn't be out for at least another eight hours or so, and that was being generous. 

It was time for preparations.

After their emotions had calmed themselves, Susie and Hazel sat down at the dinner table and began to think of how to prepare for whatever would happen that night. First order of business was to make sure the people of hometown would be safe. However, this would require everyone to believe they were in danger at all. They decided that though showing every individual monster Susie's injuries and telling them her story would be effective, but not too fast, even with the town's reduced population. They began to wonder how someone would broadcast a message to everyone in the town, and where the residents would go when the message was sent out. Their only option was a loudspeaker atop the police station. Susie noticed it from time to time, but never had it been actually used. Perhaps it was non functional, but they reasoned that it couldn't hurt to check. This train of thought led them to the second action they needed to take.

Self defense.

Susie had the fire ax, of course, but to fully be prepared for whatever came her way, she needed more than just a simple close range weapon. She wasn't entirely sure if there was any sort of firearm at the station, but if she were to stand any chance against the moon creatures, she would need all the help she could get. She knew all too well how powerful the were. Any sort of long range weapon would be ideal, even if she wasn't able to handle it well due to her injuries. However, this conversation brought upon a strange thought that Susie hadn't thought of before. If what the thing in her vision said was real, and that she was basically already dead, then how much more damage could she take before her body gave out? If whatever was giving her life was in her head, would a decapitation kill her? Was it running through her veins, keeping her alive that way? And why did this all happen after she destroyed the heart? 

No more getting sidetracked. Answers will come in time. Stay focused.

Next, and perhaps the most dangerous step, was to make sure the door south of town wasn't there anymore, and if it was, it would need to be blocked off. She knew what was down there, and she didn't want any of it crawling its way back up. First step was to stop by the general store and see what could be used to block the door. Some sort of chain, perhaps? Would that even be enough? Maybe it would have to be welded shut? Would the general store even have something like that? All questions to be answered soon enough, she had hoped. 

The plan went as follows. Susie and Hazel would wait until near sunset to head to the general store first to stock up on any supplies they would need, then head to the door to block it off. Next, they would scout out the police station and head inside, inspecting the broadcasting system and searching for any firearms or ammunition. The warning would be sent at dusk by Hazel, telling everyone to gather in the town hall, away from any windows if possible. The broadcast would be given under the veil of a severe snowstorm warning. Since the school got compromised, the town hall became the most structurally sound building in town. It was also one of the furthest away from the lake. She wasn't sure if it would be of much consequence considering the power the moon beings held, but an attempt needed to be made. When Hazel is busy warning everyone in town, Susie would prepare herself at the lake's side, and wait for whatever would come for her. 

She was far from certain that she would succeed, but it was better than nothing. Once they had waited for sunset, and mentally prepared for whatever was to happen next, Susie attempted to grab the duffle bag that held the ax by the door. She found some difficulty lifting it up with only one arm's strength, however. Hazel offered to carry it for her, which she graciously accepted, though it caused her much discomfort to know she was so physically impaired. With their plan made and finalized, Susie and Hazel exited the front door, stepping into a thin layer of snow and breathing in the chilled morning air. The temperature change didn't affect Susie much, even in her relatively lightly clothed wardrobe. She began to notice that the feelings her body usually felt, pain, heat, cold, etcetera, were starting to get less and less intense. 

She didn't want to admit it, but deep down she knew why.

The stillness of the town left Susie with a haunting sensation. Blankets of snow covered the ground, with the only indents in them only faintly visible. It felt as if the town was abandoned, as the only ambient noise seemed to come from the forest as reverberations of snapping branches echoed through the air. The buildings, for the most part, seemed unlit and devoid of life, standing only as monuments to the lives who once lived there. Knowing all that she knew, it was hard to take anything completely at face value. It felt as if something was constantly waiting around the corner for her, and it made her mind race. How had they not figured out what she'd done? Had they, and they were simply waiting for her to make a mistake? Was this a trap?

“Susie?”  
“Hmm?”  
“We're here. You doing okay?”  
So lost in thought, Susie's brain didn't even register that they were now standing outside of the general store, crudely labeled “'Sans”   
“Yeah, let's keep moving.”  
“What's that on the door?”  
Susie looked a bit closer at the front door to the store and found a note taped to it.  
“went on a trip with bro, be back soon” was scribbled on the page in messy print. 

Something told her that they wouldn't be back for a long time. Susie tried the door and, to her surprise, it was unlocked. Did he just forget, or did he really dislike being stuck here that much that he didn't care whether it got broken into? Hazel stood behind Susie quietly, keeping her head down. She probably didn't like what she read either. She was taking everything surprisingly well, considering the circumstances. As well as Susie had hoped, even if that didn't mean much. The general store was unlit and unpowered besides the food, as expected. Another thing Susie began to notice is that she didn't hunger for anything anymore. Nor did she feel a thirst for water or any sort of liquid. Feeling the more down to earth and, for a lack of a more subtle word, “alive” parts of her fade made her stomach churn. Or at least, the equivalent feeling of a lack of comfort. 

“Well, what do we need?” Hazel asked, still a but down put by the letter on the door.   
“A couple medical kits, and a chain with a padlock. Once we have those we'll head down to the station.”  
“Alright.”  
The two were about to head off in different directions before Hazel abruptly stopped.   
“Susie?”  
Susie's shoes squeaked on the floor as she turned to Hazel.   
“Yeah?”  
“P-Please stay safe.”  
“I'll be fine.” Susie replied with a smile. 

Hazel simply nodded before they went their separate ways. The light from the window was just enough for her to see the shelves, but the further towards the back of the store she went, the less luck she had with visibility. The dim light coupled with the silence of the store made the place feel isolated and lonely, even if she knew Hazel was there with her. Luckily, she was able to find a couple medical kits, before she had to explore any of the darker areas. She awkwardly held both in her arm and held them tightly to her chest.

“Hazel, I found some medkits. Any luck with chains or locks?”  
The distant sound of rattling chains met her ears.  
“Yeah, found a U lock with it. Chain's pretty large too, should hold the door closed well.”  
“Good, now lets get out of here.”  
“Yeah, this place is sorta creepy like this.”  
Susie and Hazel met up once more, the both of them dropping their findings in the duffle bag along with the ax, and headed out the door. Not only was the temperature rather cold already, but the wind began to pick up as well, and it was getting more dark by the minute. They had to hurry up. Snow crunched beneath their feet as they ran towards the south of town, trying their best to waste no time getting to the door before anything bad happened. Once Susie reached the southernmost road of the town however, she found that the path she took to the door seemingly vanished, as if a bunch of trees had grown directly in its stead. 

“Are you sure it was here, Susie?” Hazel asked, seeming a bit worried.  
“Yes, I'm sure, I-”  
Susie sighed in frustration.   
“Might as well just head to the station, I guess. No reason to get lost in the woods for something that might not even be there anymore.”  
“I haven't seen a path there ever, actually, and every time I walk home I walk within view of where it should be. Maybe you were just lucky?”  
“Nah, if I'm lucky, Undyne won't be at the police station.”  
“What's wrong with Undyne?”  
“She... We don't get along well. I did some stupid stuff as a kid and she kinda hasn't let go of it.”  
“I hope that doesn't stop us from getting the message out.”

Only one way to find out.

Surprisingly enough, Susie had always avoided seeing the inside of the police station, whether it was by her luck or Undyne's brashness, she always managed to wiggle her way out of whatever mischief she had gotten into. And if not, she was never formally escorted to the station. Though Susie had her doubts that Undyne knew what the word “formal” even meant. The door to the police station squeaked, in comparison to everything else, rather loudly. So loudly, in fact, that it echoed for a few seconds off the boundaries of the forest. The sky, stars, and snow laden ground were bathed in a dim shade of blue as the moon began to rise in the direction of the lake. She could just barely see it peeking above the treeline, but it was massive. The largest, brightest moon she'd ever seen, at least three times the size it was usually. Time was running short. 

Susie and Hazel entered the station, the ever fading light of the outdoors making visibility minimal. Hazel stepped ahead and began looking for any sort of microphone for the loudspeaker, while Susie looked for a light. She searched around frame of the door for a bit before finding a light switch and flicking it. Nothing. A few more flicks, and nothing in the sort of a light flicks on. Susie steps further into the station as Hazel turns around to face her. A horrified expression quickly forming.  
“Susie! Behind you!”  
But it was too late. Susie knew this as a dull pain fell over her body as she dropped to the cement floor, face first. Suddenly, she felt the weight of a foot pushing down on her spine. A harsh, female voice that Susie had dreaded hearing ever since she returned barked at her.   
“I knew it. I knew you'd be back.”

The next feeling Susie felt was a small, dense rectangular object pushed against the back of her head. When she heard the sound of a gun cocking, she realized it was a pistol. Hazel took a step forward and was about to raise her voice before the sensation of the gun against the back of Susie's head left. From what she could see, Undyne was now pointing a pistol at Hazel.  
“And you... You helped her, didn't you?”  
“U-Undyne, please put the gun do-”  
“Shut it! You think you can step into my station after 'disappearing' for a week? Where have you been hiding her?” She growled at Hazel.  
Susie struggled underneath the weight of her captor.   
“What the hell is your problem?! Let me go, she has nothing to do with this.”  
“You expect me to believe that? You two were always hanging around each other and talking, I've seen it. All I need is a reason to put you in, and now I do.”  
“You're not going to get away with this.”  
“Who's gonna stop me? Everyone else left since the roads got fixed, but I don't believe a second of that. It was the perfect cover for you to come back, I knew it.”  
“You're insane! What the hell did I do to deserve this?!”

Without a response, Susie could hear nothing but the clinking of chains behind her, followed by a cold steel ring being locked shut around her right wrist. Undyne gasped quietly when she grabbed at the empty air where her other arm should have been. Her foot shifted a bit, enough to put her foot straight through one of the holes in Susie's torso. Undyne stumbled backward as Susie crawled away from her, turning to face her crazed, bloodshot eyes. Her uniform had been torn in a few places, and she was missing her badge. Her arms shook as she held the police pistol towards Susie's head, the firearm making slight metal clinking noises in sync with her. She was breathing a bit more heavily than before. The cramped nature of the police station didn't help the stressful nature of the situation, placing Undyne only a few feet away from Hazel and Susie. The only way of escape was either through the entrance door, or down a hallway behind Hazel that they surely wouldn't be able to reach in time. 

“What the hell are you?” Undyne shakily asked.   
“Look, I have a very limited amount of time on my hands, and there's a hell of a lot more at stake right now than whatever troubles we have between us.”  
Undyne pointed her pistol toward the roof and fired a round, making Hazel squeal in fear behind her.  
“That's not what I asked. Tell me what the hell you are or you're getting a bullet through the brain, I swear to god. I have nine more, and I'll use as many as it takes, you freak.”  
“Undyne... I-I'm not sure how to convince you of this, but our entire world is in some sort of sick, twisted test chamber, and we aren't the first. If I don't stop whoever is behind this, it won't be the last either. We just need to broadcast a message through the loudspeaker here, and get a pistol or something, and-”

Undyne began to nervously laugh, keeping her eyes centered on Susie.  
“Are... Are you serious? You really expect me to believe that?”  
“No, not really, but it's the truth whether you believe it or-”

Suddenly, a loud metallic bang echoed from the roof top, as if a heavy object had been dropped upon it. Hazel and Susie looked upward, and their hearts sank as they began to hear footsteps.  
“Stay. Right. Here.”  
Undyne demanded as she stepped out the door and into the outside. Hazel and Susie both looked out the windows intently as she walked. Stepping around in the snow, she turned back towards the station and pointed her gun at the roof of the building. The footsteps started up again until they ceased right above where Hazel and Susie were. Then, an incredibly elongated, dark red, fleshy hand punctured the roof, grasping, and completely covering in the process, her torso. Hazel shrieked as Susie was quickly pulled through the roof, and met face to face with an enormous, at least nine foot tall humanoid being.

Just like its arm, the rest of its body was a dark red, fleshy mess of bone and organs, its head being the most horrid of all with a near featureless head full of holes. Resting in these holes were small, glowing spheres that resembled moons, which rotated and pulsed independently of each other. It had a striking resemblance to the gigantic red being that she made contact with in the ashen world. Susie attempted to struggle, which only made the being's grip tighter. With its other monstrous hand, it lightly placed the tip of its finger on Susie's forehead, which is the only thing she remembers before she blacks out.

The next time she opens her eyes, she's in a black void, completely barren of anything but white and blue dots in the distance. She gets to her feet and blinks, and before her the ever pale blue moon appears. What was at one point a horrifying cacophony of screaming and terror was now an angelic, almost holy chorus of singing voices, all in perfect harmony with one another. Susie fell to her knees and began to cry. The voices, the song, the droning on of it all, she couldn't stop the tears that were flowing from her face. It was simply too beautiful for her to handle. As the tears blurred her vision, she suddenly felt a looming sense of dread fall over her. For all the majesty the voices brought, she knew that something was hiding behind it all. Her trembling body faltered as she fell to the floor, and for once she felt she finally understood something. An idea had been forced into her brain.

And in that moment, every star blinked.

It was never about the moon. It played a part, but it was never the focus.   
She wasted so much time fearing the moon's presence that she forgot about the stars.

And the darkness between them. 

Once the moon had faded from her eyes, she found herself laying on the snow laden ground next to the police station's front door, though she couldn't feel the normal cold chill that she usually could from this time of night. In fact, she felt almost nothing from her current surroundings. She knew she didn't have much time left and that she needed to act quickly, but she didn't expect her feelings to deteriorate so fast. She would have thought about it more, however she soon realized that there were far more pressing matters at hand. Once she had risen to her feet, Susie looked to the sky, which had completely changed appearance since she last saw it. The sky that once served as a melancholy backdrop for the day's end turned into a half bright orange wall of clouds that surrounded Hometown from the horizon to halfway up the skyline. From that point to the sky's zenith was a pitch black sky, or perhaps void, full of stars that disappeared and reappeared constantly, but only in pairs of two relatively close to each other.

Then, a thought came into her head that shook her, and once the revelation came to her that those weren't stars, the loudspeaker on top of the building came to life. From it came a horrific droning noise that sounded like breathing intertwined with radio static, and beneath that still, voices. The eyes in the sky began to blink at a higher frequency now, and Susie began to recognize the void as something much, much more. What she thought was simply the darkness in between the stars were writhing, pulsating black tendrils and body parts, some resembling the familiar and some bent and distorted in ways she never knew possible until now. She wasn't sure what to make of it. The snow began to darken from a simple pure white to a darker gray color, and she knew exactly what this meant.

Then, she realized she couldn't see or hear Hazel anywhere. Susie panicked and whipped her head around, yelling her name out to the dead air around her, and fearing the worst. 

“Susie!”

That was her, and it was coming from the back of the police station. Susie recklessly burst through the front door and turned right, then left down the back hallway past the lobby. On the left side of the gray, concrete hallway was a row of four cramped jail cells, all of them open wide. Susie slowed her sprint as she reached the last one, from which pained and fearful whimpers came. When she reached the last cell, she was greeted with Hazel looking away from her, a small handgun in both of her shaking hands. Laying below her in a pool of blood and bones was Undyne's corpse. Susie could do nothing but stand with her mouth agape at the sight. She hadn't even considered this as a possibility, that Hazel could be capable of murdering another being. She seemed to be taking it even better than Susie did. 

“H... Hazel?”  
“Yeah?”  
“You killed Undyne?!”  
“Y-Yeah, I did. But she tried to kill me first. She was crazy, y'know? Thought I was one of 'them', whatever that means.”  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yeah, just the left half of my face feels a little numb, but I'm fine.”

When Hazel turned to face her completely, Susie felt bile rise from her stomach, and her heart sank. The top left half of her face was missing entirely, as if it had been burned off by some chemical that left nothing but dark, pulsating semi-liquid around where her left eye once was. Susie immediately got flashbacks. Flashbacks to the golden woman who had suffered the same fate Hazel would. A sense of heavy regret burrowed into her chest as if someone was crushing it. Another one taken by them. Another one that would suffer until they turned into something else. Another she failed to save. 

No, not again, never again. Not this time.

“H-Hazel... why does your face feel numb?”  
“When I, uhm... took care of Undyne, some black stuff sprayed out and hit my face. Came out fine, though.”  
“Right...”  
“Is something wrong?”

Yes, something was wrong. Something was very, incredibly wrong. Though for how terrible of a situation Susie knew she was in, she couldn't let her know. That would probably only prolong the suffering or make it worse. 

“Nah. Just, give me the gun and we'll get out of here, okay?”  
“Alright, we better hurry, it's getting really dark outside.”

She didn't see them. Of course she didn't see the orange clouds or the eyes in the sky. She wasn't attuned to the moon like Susie was. Whatever the red creatures had done to her, every time she had encountered one she saw the moon in a vision. With every consecutive time, the moon's once fearful and threatening cries became a joyous choir of beauty. With every encounter, things begun to change and warp. Now, what Susie had thought to be the last stage of this attunement, she saw everything as it was, without the influence of the moon creatures. Whatever made her special in some way had worked somewhat in her favor, but at the cost of not being able to let the world see what she did. If one of the glowing moon creatures appeared, could Hazel even comprehend them?

She had reasoned that it wouldn't matter soon enough.

Susie took the firearm from Hazel and took a deep breath. 

“Hazel?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Remember when things were simple? When the biggest concerns in our lives were not being able to sleep, and the town's reputation of me?”  
“Yeah... I still remember the night you came out of the woods in the middle of the night, and all you wanted was someone to talk to.”  
“I can still taste the hot chocolate. J-Just as delicious as always.”  
Susie's voice began to crack as tears began to roll from her eyes and down her cheeks. She could hear Hazel gasp under her breath before tightly embracing her. Susie felt the warmth from this hug not from the heat her body gave off, but the genuine emotion and heartfelt understanding she put into it. This only made her tear up further.  
“Susie... It's okay. We're going to make it through this together, okay?”

Together. Together. Together.

That single word echoed in her mind and caused her body to shake. 

“Thank you Hazel, f-for everything.”  
“Of course, I'll always be there for you.”

Why did she have to make this so difficult?

“Now let's get going, you still gotta make it to the lake in time, right?”  
“Yeah. You lead the way.”  
“Suit yourself.”

The rabbit walked past the entrance to the cell, leaving Undyne's corpse behind. Maybe she would be able to focus on the rotting stench of death if it wasn't for what she was about to do. Every footstep she took became louder and more resonant as she made her way toward the lobby. Susie looked on with tears blurring her vision, her body becoming not much more than a nondescript purple figure. She wasn't looking. She would have no idea. She had to do this, or else so much worse would be waiting for her on the other end of her sickness. The sickness needed to be cured. She would never understand, even if she spent forever trying to explain it to her. Said explaining could probably cause even more unwanted reactions. It was just too risky. This was for her own good. 

It took what felt like all of her strength to lift the handgun to point at her, and even more to blink the tears from her eyes to line up her head with the sights. 

“I'm sorry.”  
“Sorry for-”

Click. 

Hazel stood in the hallway facing Susie with a shaken and revolted look on her face. Susie began to cry even more.

“S... S-Susie?”  
“I-I'm sorry, this is for your own goo-”  
“You just tried to kill me. After everything I've done for you, after all the kindness I've poured into you, this is how you repay me? When we need each other the most?!”  
“H-Hazel, you don't understand, if I don't do this now you'll-”  
“Don't talk to me! Don't you dare!”

Susie recoiled, dropping the empty gun to the floor, watching the black tar-like substance begin to pour from her wound. Hazel begin to weep tears of her own.

“Why?!”  
“You can't understand, I can't tell you or you'll end up like Alphys!”  
“I don't care. I would rather turn into a monster than be killed by one.”

Something snapped in Susie's head, and everything went dark. For a moment, she felt bliss in an empty abyss beyond the world she knew. She floated in an endless sea of darkness, simply existing as a wave among many waves, and a wave among one current, and a current leading into a sea of nothingness. Then, Susie felt reality pulling her back. She heard Hazel's screams and choking noises. One phrase reverberated in her head, one that owed nothing to her yet was entirely her own at the same time.

The suffering must end.

When her vision returned, they were both on the floor, Susie on her knees and her hand around Hazel's neck. Her weight and single hand was not enough, however, and Hazel was able to push her off and land on top of her instead. Hazel did her best to hold Susie down, screaming and begging for her to stop what she was doing, that this wasn't her. She heard nothing but flesh. Her face was dripping with a mixture of her own blood, the black blood, and her tears. Her fur was stained with red and black, and Susie could feel the desperation in her voice. It still wasn't enough, and Susie brought her knee up to strike Hazel in the abdomen, all the strength she once had to hold her down leaving her. Susie rolled over so that she was on top once more and held her by the collarbone. 

The thing that by far brought the most tears to Susie's eyes was that the screams did not stop as she descended upon Hazel's neck, biting down harshly and piercing her fur and skin. The screams became garbled and drowned in bodily fluids as Susie bit down even harder, a burst of blood spraying into Susie's mouth and the back of her throat. Of the feelings she no longer had, taste was not one of them as she could very clearly taste the overwhelmingly metallic flavor of the blood that dripped between her teeth. 

It only took one turn of Susie's head for the crack to ring out across the station, and just like that, her full range of hearing had returned to her. The trickle of blood pouring across the concrete along with the last remaining strained noises of Hazel was the last thing Susie heard before her own screams and cries filled the void Hazel left. She screamed to the ceiling and shook in terror at the act she had just committed, the blood of her last remaining friend pouring out of her mouth and running down her chin, staining her clothes red. 

She was now entirely alone, and felt just as isolated in that moment as she did when she was cluelessly walking the void of the underworld. Susie, with a barely functional and shaking hand, held Hazel's decapitated body from the back and held it close to her, crying profusely about how sorry she was. About how this was for her own good, and that it had to end this way. 

But not a soul heard her.

Susie wasn't sure how long she stood there with the lifeless body in her arm, but eventually she set her down gently upon the concrete and wiped her eyes. There was nothing left to do, and nowhere left to go. Susie stepped up and tried to ignore the splashing of the blood beneath her feet as she stepped out into the ash that had now covered Hometown. In the time it took for her to exit the police station, the orange clouds had completely vanished, being replaced by more blinking stars. Susie watched as the stars began to move their positions higher into the southern sky. In their pairs, every eye slithered towards the middle of the sky until they formed into two incredibly large circular groups of them. Then, they all blinked at once, and when their eyes opened the eyes had congealed and became two monstrous white eyes, about the size of moons themselves. From beneath these eyes, and from the writhing black flesh that made up what was now the sky, came two dripping black arms. 

The ground shook as the creature fell to the ground, detaching from the sky above, it making a constant, incredibly low pitched growling noise. Every impact the thing's hands made with the ground sent shock waves throughout the area. It dragged itself by its arms and hands across the forest, toppling down every tree in its path with no regard for any life or harm doing to other creatures. Susie could tell that it simply meant nothing but an omen of destruction. Slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed, Susie sprinted across the ashes. Droplets of a thick, black substance began to drop from the sky as a burning, hissing sound echoed around her. The ash, stained with dark spots, became even more difficult to traverse. Some black spots began to land on her skin, causing it to burn severely as purple flesh began to melt off of her. She felt no pain, yet her strength began to wane. 

Susie went as fast as her legs could take her, the acid rain becoming more and more frequent as the droplets became much more. Twig sized, unrecognizable black body parts spattered against the ground and burned Susie on contact as the sky fell apart and the buildings around her melted. She wasn't sure how she wasn't dead yet, though she reckoned it was because she was never really alive in the first place. Susie hastily turned a corner as the lake came into view. The top half of the moon was still visible on top of the darkness somehow, and with nothing left to lose, she started towards it. The moon's reflection on the lake tampered by the falling sky, though still not entirely distorted, she didn't stop running once she reached the water's edge.

Nor did she stop when she inexplicably became able to walk on the water's surface.

The moon, the more she looked at it, and the closer she got, began to morph into a sort of pure white light. Susie's eyes began to burn simply from looking at it, but she knew she had nowhere else to go. There was nothing left to run to. No one left to run to. Just the light. Every step she took was one of agony, burning, and torment. These steps, however, were ones she knew she could make. There was nothing left that mattered now. Not the sky's descent, not the abomination approaching from the south. Just the light.

And then, Susie emerged from the other side. All the pain of the burns hit her at once, as well as the cold chill of a harsh wind that lashed at her bare, tender skin, whistling eerily.. First, she looked at her arm, which had burned through straight to the bone in the middle, and on a couple of her fingers. The rest of it was bright red flesh, still sizzling from the event before. Then, she looked at where she currently was. She stood on a dark, steel surface, surrounded by a thick orange fog. Brief flashes of lightning in the distance flickered every once in a while, but it did little to give her any more visibility. This was until the fog gradually began to fade away, leaving the sight it was covering up to be viewed in all of its horrifying glory. 

In front of her was a massive empty space in every direction, one which only seemed to stop at a similar wall of orange fog hundreds of miles away. Between this fog and her were massive dark steel spheres, larger in size than even the cubed test chamber but made out of the same material. Dozens of them hung in the air, all connected by sky scraper sized chains which all connected to each other. Above her, and all around her were these spheres that hung like a demented spider web. These were the spheres that were mentioned in the message Susie read in the deeper parts of the Sea. Every one of these spheres held hundreds of test chambers, and each chamber held hundreds of experiments. 

Susie wasn't sure whether it was the pain from the wind and the burn marks, or the intense crushing weight of the knowledge of how little she understood, but nevertheless she found herself falling to her knees, letting out yet another stream of tears. Was it all just a sick test within a test? For what purpose? What terrible plan was she the centerpiece of? Or was she nothing but a thought in an endless sea of whispers and screams? When a strange, almost electric hum began behind her, she hoped her questions were answered. 

Susie got to her feet and looked behind her to see a tall, slender being with a feminine figure floating just a few inches above the ground. It towered a good two meters above Susie, in spite of this. Its body was made of a purple, velvety material. From the middle of its body up it had a generally normal, feminine humanoid body shape, but from the middle down the body slowly became more torn and shredded until nothing but tatters remained at the bottom. The body had something resembling long sleeves, yet no arms of any sort were inside them. There didn't seem to be an actual body to it at all, as if it was a floating, neglected dress, and nothing more. What really struck Susie was the being's head, which was a pale blue, perfectly spherical stone, similar to the moon but as if it had no craters. The being simply floated there, its back arching as it silently bent over to observe Susie, still making that strange humming tone. She could do nothing but stand in awe and fear. 

“Wh... Why are you doing this to me?”

No response, besides the creature moving closer to her. Too terrified to move, Susie could only stand and watch as the figure lifted its arm, slowly letting it fall onto Susie's shoulder. Susie, in comparison to this creature, was nothing, with her burnt skin, blackened and bloodied clothing, and a trail of blood down her mouth. She almost felt unworthy of her presence, but its arm on her shoulder left a feeling inside her that she hadn't felt in a very long time. A feeling of her struggles being understood. The being raised it's other hand, and in an instant, she felt the unbearable and indescribable pain of her skull being split in two from the top to the base of her jaw.

Susie fell to her knees once more, and watched as the moon creature levitated Susie's pulsating brain in front of her. With a simple wave of it's arm, it had disappeared from the air. Susie gargled and choked on the blood pouring down her throat, this same blood drenching her clothing. As whatever strength the blood running through her veins left her, she somehow managed to utter the last words her body would be permitted to speak.

“D... D-Did I M... M-Matter?”

But the creature did not understand, for this interaction between them was comparatively that of an ant attempting to communicate with a god. The creature faded from both the world, as well as Susie's vision, as she fell to the cold steel concrete. Her blood leaked out of her body and pooled around her head, her last thoughts being of what a failure she had been. Her friends, if not already, would soon be dead or taken from the world, only for countless doppelgangers to suffer afterward. As whatever was keeping her alive faded, as did her body, deteriorating and graying until there was nothing left but ash. Ash that would, soon enough, be picked up by the wind and blown into the infinite expanses beyond, nothing left in this world that could indicate her presence was ever there in the first place.

Eons later, Susie finds herself laying on a hill south of Hometown. It's a pleasant, warm afternoon, and school had just ended for the day. The clouds in the sky are scant, and there's a gentle autumn breeze blowing through the air. Beside her laid Kris, the only person she had felt any genuine connection with in a very long time. Susie decided to take Kris to her favorite spot in the town, a little clearing south of the church where she goes to think. Kris was the only one she'd ever taken to it, making him the second person in her knowledge to even know of the location. She talks on and on about her classmates, her opinions on them, and how she plans to change her attitude for the future after that day. Kris mostly just listens, only occasionally commenting on her views, and on what language she could use to seem less unapproachable to people. Yes, they do talk at length, but they really just enjoy the presence of one another. Their whole life was ahead of them, and they had all of it to spend together. There would be fights and complications for sure, but they both knew that this was the start to a wonderful friendship. One that would, in time, grow to last the years and decades to come.

They know nothing of the moon creatures, the sea, or what lies below and above, and when they look out the window and see the light blue grace of the moon that carpets the land in light, she no longer feels fear or hatred. Only a calming, reassuring feeling. But in that moment in the clearing, once Susie had felt she had said enough, she let Kris walk home with her to her parent's place a short walk out of town and into the woods. She hadn't treated them with the respect they deserved for a while, but she was going to change all of that. Because for the first time in her life, she felt she had control over her life. And, perhaps more importantly...

… She felt hope in her heart.


End file.
